International efforts to combat Islamophobia require more than lip service

2022/03/28 Leave a comment

Like so many UN resolutions…

Greater failure is with respect to lack of meaningful action on China and its oppression of the Uyghurs:

Earlier this month, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution designating March 15 as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. 

Lauded by some, criticized by others, it remains to be seen whether such a move will actually have an impact on the millions of people worldwide who face state-sanctioned discrimination, oppression, and genocide. 

“Today UN has finally recognized the grave challenge confronting the world: of Islamophobia, respect for religious symbols & practices & of curtailing systematic hate speech & discrimination against Muslims. Next challenge is to ensure implementation of this landmark resolution,” tweeted Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister.

The resolution calls on the international community — governments, civil society, the private sector and faith-based-organizations — “to organize and support various high-visibility events aimed at effectively increasing awareness of all levels about curbing Islamophobia.”

The date of the annual commemoration holds significance as the tragic anniversary of the rampage on two mosques in Christchurch, N.Z. in 2019. The perpetrator was a far-right terrorist and white supremacist who livestreamed the first of his two mass shootings on Facebook. He killed a total of 51 worshippers.

The brutality of those attacks was a clear example of the devastating consequences of Islamophobia, a phenomenon that has reached “epidemic proportions,” according to a 2021 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief. 

“Following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and other horrific acts of terrorism purportedly carried out in the name of Islam, institutional suspicion of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim has escalated to epidemic proportions,” reads the report’s introduction. “Numerous States — along with regional and international bodies — have responded to security threats by adopting measures that disproportionately target Muslims and define Muslims as both high-risk and at risk of radicalization.”

Irrational fear of Muslims writ large has been used as an excuse to clamp down on civil liberties around the world, provide unequal treatment to Muslim migrants and refugees, as well as utilized as a pretext to implement genocidal policies in various places including in China and in Myanmar. In India, home to the second largest population of Muslims in the world, the situation has become dire.

In a recent TIME magazine article titled “Is India headed for an anti-Muslim genocide?” Debasish Roy Chowdhury, co-author of “To Kill A Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism,” provided a bleak assessment.

“Indian social media today is filled with videos of self-appointed protectors of Hinduism calling for the lynching of Muslims — an act so common that it hardly makes news anymore. High-profile Hindu supremacists are seldom booked for hate speech. Muslims routinely face random attacks for such ‘crimes’ as transporting cattle or being in the company of Hindu women. Sometimes, the provocation is simply that somebody is visibly Muslim. As [President Narendra] Modi himself has told election rallies, people ‘creating violence’ can be ‘identified by their clothes.’”

In February, schools in a state controlled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), banned female students from wearing hijabs. This followed the passage of what Human Rights Watch described as “a slew of laws and policies that systematically discriminate against religious minorities.” Protesters have been killed. 

Not surprising then that the Indian government opposed the UN resolution on Islamophobia. France, also accused of violating the human rights of its Muslim population, similarly pushed back.

“Time and again we have seen the French authorities use the vague and ill-defined concept of ‘radicalization’ or ‘radical Islam’ to justify the imposition of measures without valid grounds, which risks leading to discrimination in its application against Muslims and other minority groups,” said a spokesperson with Amnesty International last March. 

If an international day to combat Islamophobia is to have any meaning, it will require governments around the world to hold each other accountable.

Source: International efforts to combat Islamophobia require more than lip service

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From adaptability to vulnerability: Changes in admission criteria and refugee participation in social assistance

2022/03/28 Leave a comment

The Toronto Sun headline, as typical, spins the study with the header Canada’s immigration laws deter economic independence among some refugees whereas the article is more nuanced in how it characterizes the change, a valid change to address humanitarian objectives. And as the study notes, the gap decreases over time:

The 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) replaced the Immigration Act, 1976 as the primary legislation guiding immigration in Canada. It marked a major policy shift—from an emphasis on adaptability to vulnerability—in the admission of resettled refugees. Prior to the IRPA, those awarded refugee status had to demonstrate their capacity for economic independence in Canada. This would normally be within a year after arrival and would consider age, educational attainment, skills, presence of family members and other factors. The IRPA significantly altered Canada’s refugee priorities by committing to admission on humanitarian grounds and prioritizing those in need of protection (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2016; Lu et al., 2020).

Changes in selection policy had a particular impact on the characteristics of government-assisted refugees (GARs). For example, prior to the IRPA (1997 to 2001), 53% of newly admitted GARs had less than a high school education. However, this percentage increased to 74% among GARs who arrived after the IRPA (2005 to 2009). The share of lone-parent GARs also increased from 6% in the pre-IRPA cohort to 12% in the post-IRPA cohort. Because of these changes, refugees admitted after the IRPA may be more prone to relying on social assistance than those who arrived before the IRPA. This is less likely for privately sponsored refugees (PSRs) who are more likely to have family or friends in Canada and are better positioned to find employment through their sponsors or familial networks.

A recent article published in International Migration compared the long-term use of social assistance among resettled refugees arriving under pre-IRPA guidelines (1997 to 2001), during the transition period (2002 to 2004), and after the IRPA (2005 to 2009). Authors Lisa Kaida (McMaster University), Max Stick (McMaster University and Statistics Canada) and Feng Hou (Statistics Canada) used the Longitudinal Immigration Database to determine whether resettled refugees arriving after the introduction of the IRPA were more likely to rely on social assistance than earlier cohorts. The analysis examined GARs aged 20 to 54 at landing. The social assistance rates among PSRs were also calculated for comparative purposes.

Chart 1 displays the social assistance rates of resettled refugees (GARs and PSRs) admitted during the three periods. The social assistance rate is defined as the percentage of refugees whose family received social assistance income in a specific tax year. The results show that two years after landing, transition-period (71%) and post-IRPA (72%) GARs received social assistance at higher rates than pre-IRPA (66%) GARs. In contrast to GARs, pre-IRPA PSRs had higher social assistance rates (33%) than transition-period (30%) and post-IRPA (28%) PSRs in year 2.

While the social assistance rates of GARs dropped each year after landing, the rates for transition-period and post-IRPA GARs declined more slowly than those for the pre-IRPA cohort. The gap in social assistance rates between pre-IRPA and transition-period GARs continued to widen until year 8 (14 percentage points). The gap between the pre- and post-IRPA cohorts peaked in year 5 (16 percentage points).

After year 8 (for the transition-period cohort) and after year 5 (for the post-IRPA cohort), the gap in social assistance rates narrowed between these cohorts and the pre-IRPA cohort. By year 10, the difference in social assistance rates between the pre-IRPA cohort and the other two cohorts fell below 10 percentage points. Labour market characteristics of transition-period and post-IRPA GARs, especially their lower employment rates compared with pre-IRPA GARs, largely explained the differences in social assistance rates.

Social assistance rates of PSR cohorts slowly declined up to years 5 and 6, and then hovered at around 20% to 25% until year 10. The difference in social assistance rates between pre-IRPA, and transition-period and post-IRPA PSRs remained small from years 3 to 10.

The findings suggest that GARs arriving after the introduction of the IRPA took longer to integrate into the Canadian labour market and become economically independent than those arriving prior to the IRPA. However, transition-period and post-IRPA GARs started to close the gap with their pre-IRPA counterparts five to eight years after arrival. By the 10th year, their rates of social assistance decreased to 35%.

Source: From adaptability to vulnerability: Changes in admission criteria and refugee participation in social assistance

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McWhorter: Vocabulary imposed from on high sometimes just can’t catch on

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

Before the Canadian government considers embracing the US term BIPOC in its review of the Employment Equity Act, a useful reminder that it is no better than visible minorities in terms of how people see themselves, beyond academics and activists:

“BIPOC” has been with us for a few years now, and a certain verdict would appear to be in. Beyond academic and activist circles and some corners of social media, the acronym, which stands for “Black, Indigenous and people of color,” seems to strike most as rather peculiar. Clumsy, even. The Black academic and San Francisco Examiner columnist Teresa Moore wrote that the term “means well, but I want it to go away,” calling it “a solution to a problem that hadn’t needed solving,” a “‘New Coke’ of a word.”

I agree. Yet this does not mean that the term is, in itself, a mistake or a failure.

To be sure, the term has major problems, despite the good intentions of those who have broadcast and embraced it. The “POC” part is a frustratingly broad category, implying that Latinos and Asians (umbrella terms that are, perhaps, also too broad) constitute a coherent set — not to mention one that is somehow separate from Black and Indigenous people denoted by the “BI.” And “BI” is confusing, in that the term sounds at first as if it refers to bisexual people. Then, even when we are clear that it doesn’t, “BI” still sounds like a prefix of some kind, leading one to wonder just what a “POC” is. When spoken, “BIPOC” sounds like pocks who are bi in some way. And in English at least, “pock” doesn’t sound much like a person. Or, to my ear, if it did refer to a person, it would be in derision: “You pock!”

Although this isn’t how the term actually emerged, “BIPOC” sounds like one in a bunch of names thrown out amid a brainstorming session but never taken seriously, passed over in favor of something better that came up later. And that’s just it: “BIPOC” emerged — or, at least, broadly gained traction — not via a gradual consensus but via abrupt imposition amid the racial reckoning that began two springs ago, when many Americans were determined to renew our commitment to approaching race and racism in constructive ways.

Now, this kind of imposition does not automatically prevent a term from catching on. The problematizing of the term “master bedroom,” out of a sense that we should retire “master” as a relic of plantation slavery, arose from the same impulse as the usage of “BIPOC” and seems to be a success: “Master bedroom” is becoming non grata among some adjuncts of the real estate industry. Issues relating specifically to Black people seem particularly likely to dig a term in, as we also saw with how quickly “African American” caught on around three decades ago.

However, we are not merely passive supplicants at the mercy of prelates imposing lexical fiats from on high. Not everything settles in. For example, we are seeing that proposals for group names are less likely to be embraced when imposed from outside the group itself. When the Rev. Jesse Jackson called for the use of “African American,” his status and authority in Black America were roughly equal to Oprah Winfrey’s today. “African American” would have been much less likely to get around if it had been proposed by academics or lesser-known activists.

That kind of imposition from the outside has meant that “Latinx,” a gender-neutral alternative to “Latino” and “Latina,” is hardly used by the people it purports to refer to. In 2020, Pew Research found that only 3 percent of Latinos use the term. “BIPOC” isn’t doing much better. Too often, we take terminology proposals from academics and journalists as if we will henceforth be penalized — even if only socially — for going against their prescriptions. But their suggestions do not automatically affect language as it is used by ordinary people making themselves understood casually and comfortably.

It can seem that way because academics and journalists do a disproportionate amount of public writing and talking. For example, I suspect that normal people will continue saying “master bedroom”; I certainly will. Thus, there is no need to bristle at the proliferation of “BIPOC” as some kind of glowering fiat. Very few BIPOCs use it, and as Amy Harmon reported last year for The Times, in one national poll, “more than twice as many white Democrats said they felt ‘very favorably’ toward ‘BIPOC’ as Americans who identify as any of the nonwhite racial categories it encompasses.” And that is unlikely to change.

Again, this doesn’t mean “BIPOC” is a failed term. It has simply become part of a burgeoning register of English favored primarily by certain professors and political activists. This is no more a problem than another register, the academese favored by many scholars of literature and the social sciences. People of this realm have a way of writing and even speaking to one another on academic subjects that seems almost exotic to the outsider. For example, the renowned critical theorist and University of California, Berkeley, professor Judith Butler was granted first place in the journal Philosophy and Literature’s tongue-in-cheek bad-writing contest in 1998 for her prose in a 1997 essay, “Further Reflections on Conversations of Our Time,” that included this passage:

“The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.”

I find it a little facile to dismiss this genre, even in jest, as simply bad writing. Its practitioners intend it as studiously objective and precise. And the main thing, despite how unaesthetic this writing may be, is that it has no effect on how most of us communicate. It’s an in-group practice that people look upon from the outside with a certain bemusement. It is a jargon.

People who refer to hegemony and structural totalities have a jargon. These days, there is what we could call, yes, a woke jargon. That is where “Latinx” and “BIPOC” live. These terms are not mistakes or misfires in not being taken up by most of the people they refer to, then. Who, after all, has an issue with there being jargons?

As Sandra Garcia reported for The Times in 2020, Sylvia Obell, a host of the podcast “Okay, Now Listen,” said, “We are asking for a lot of things, and being called BIPOC is not one of them.” She added, “Stop making decisions for us without us.” She need not worry: The decision cannot be, and will not be, forced on her or anyone else. People will be referred to as BIPOC among a certain contingent who, like all contingents, have ways of speaking that signal membership in their group and dedication to the group’s fundamental commitments.

There isn’t a thing wrong with that, but the rest of us can — and will — happily continue speaking and writing of Black people, Latino or Hispanic people, Native American or Indigenous people, people of South Asian or East Asian descent and all the other kinds of people, including, if we please, people of color.

Source: Vocabulary imposed from on high sometimes just can’t catch on

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Streamlined immigration program for Ukrainians creates a ‘two-tiered,’ ‘racialized’ system, opposition says

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

Interesting that a Conservative MP, Brad Redekopp, raised the issue, given the party’s close connection to Ukrainian Canadians and that 14 percent of his riding, Saskatoon West, is of Ukrainian ancestry:

Opposition parties says the Liberal government’s streamlined immigration program for Ukrainians creates a two-tiered, racialized system that prioritizes Ukrainian immigrants over refugees from other conflict zones, including Afghanistan.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser appeared before the House of Commons immigration committee Thursday, where he faced questions about the differences between the government’s new special program and its dedicated refugee resettlement initiatives. During the meeting, Conservative committee member Brad Redekopp accused the government of prioritizing Ukrainian immigrants over Afghan refugees.

“Under your watch, it seems like you’ve set up a racialized system, a two-tiered system, where white Europeans come in faster than people from Afghanistan. How do you explain that?” Mr. Redekopp asked the minister.

Mr. Fraser rejected Mr. Redekopp’s claim, saying the situation in Ukraine demands a different response. He noted that Ukrainians can find their way to other Western countries for Canadian processing and biometrics screening more easily than Afghans.

“It has more to do with their ability to leave Ukraine, compared to … those who don’t have that ability to leave Afghanistan, than it does a decision by the federal government to be more kind to one group of people than another,” Mr. Fraser said.

He added that the government opted to offer streamlined immigration measures to Ukrainians, rather than a dedicated refugee program, because European counterparts and the Ukrainian Canadian community have indicated that most Ukrainians who come to Canada will want to eventually return home. This is not the case with people coming from Afghanistan, he said, hence the need for a refugee program.

“With respect to Afghanistan, I wish the circumstances were the same. I don’t have the same hope that it will be safe for the people that we are welcoming permanently as refugees to return home one day, despite their potential desire to do so, and that’s allowed us to create difference responses for the unique circumstances.”

Jenny Kwan, NDP immigration critic, also said the government has made it easier for Ukrainians compared with refugees from other countries. She noted what witnesses have told the committee regarding the discrepancy.

“They all said that they support the special measures for Ukraine, but what they’re concerned about is that it’s not being applied elsewhere. All the witnesses agree that government should extend those special immigration measures to other regions also experiencing conflict, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, Hong Kong, et cetera,” Ms. Kwan said during the committee meeting.

Mr. Fraser said he wants to see the impact of the special measures for Ukrainians first before considering any similar streamlined programs.

Last year, the government committed to resettling 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan, and so far more than 9,500 have arrived in Canada since August. Much like the Liberal government’s Syrian refugee resettlement program, Afghan refugees have access to federal services and the Resettlement Assistance Program.

More than 10,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Canada since Jan. 1. Most travelled to Canada under their own devices before the government announced the special immigration measures last week, Mr. Fraser said.

The Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel eliminates most of the normal visa requirements and allows Ukrainians to stay in Canada for up to three years if they pass a background check and security screening. The measures are offered through the immigration stream; as a result, Ukrainians are not considered refugees and will not have access to the same support.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress recently called on the federal government to implement departure and arrival plans to assist Ukrainians with travel to Canada, provide financial support for a transitional period and encourage provincial governments to recruit and sponsor displaced people. The UCC is also urging the government to provide funding for settlement agencies, which could help Ukrainians co-ordinate transport, housing and health care and assist with work permit applications.

The government is in the process of setting up a family reunification program that would allow relatives in Canada to sponsor family members from Ukraine to move here permanently. Details are expected in the coming weeks.

Source: Streamlined immigration program for Ukrainians creates a ‘two-tiered,’ ‘racialized’ system, opposition says

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Biden administration announces asylum system overhaul: What you need to know

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

Useful overview:

The Biden administration announced the final version of its long-awaited U.S. asylum overhaul Thursday, aiming to speed up processing at the border and alleviate backlogs throughout the country’s immigration courts.

Fixing asylum, a process that can drag out for years, was one of President Biden’s campaign promises. The overhaul represents the most significant change to the nation’s immigration system since he took office.

The new policy is scheduled to take effect May 28, two months after it’s published in the Federal Register. The change won’t affect most asylum seekers as long as a pandemic-related rule limiting access at the border remains in force. But the new system will probably be in place once that rule is lifted and the uptick in asylum requests begins.

“The current system for handling asylum claims at our borders has long needed repair,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a news release. “Through this rule, we are building a more functional and sensible asylum system to ensure that individuals who are eligible will receive protection more swiftly, while those who are not eligible will be rapidly removed.”

Asylum seekers will now have their claims heard by an asylum officer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services within several months, if the plan works as intended, instead of waiting years for a final determination from an immigration judge.

The Homeland Security and Justice departments released a draft proposal in August. After reading through 5,000 public comments about the draft, officials on a call with reporters Wednesday said they made some changes but maintained the overall framework of the proposal. The officials — from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts — spoke to reporters on condition that they not be named.

Under the rule, anyone denied protection by an asylum officer could request a reconsideration from Citizenship and Immigration Services within seven days. If turned down, the person could ask that an immigration judge review their application and later bring their case to the Board of Immigration Appeals and federal circuit courts. After all bids are exhausted, or if none are pursued, the person would be subject to deportation. The rule does not apply to unaccompanied children who arrive without a parent

Supporters say the policy improves what has long been considered a scary process for traumatized migrants. Instead of having to initially recount their worst experiences in an adversarial court setting as they defend themselves against deportation, migrants will now be able to make their case in an asylum office.

But many advocates worry the changes weaken constitutional due process rights for asylum seekers by essentially expanding the so-called expedited removal process, a mechanism used to quickly turn back immigrants apprehended at the border.

Richard Caldarone, who manages litigation at the Tahirih Justice Center, a national nonprofit serving immigrants who fled gender-based violence, said the new process serves no significant humanitarian purpose because it doesn’t give trauma survivors enough time to find a lawyer, gather evidence and recover.

“Survivors of trauma will not be able to recite what happened to them 72 hours after arriving in a safe place to a government official,” he said. “Given the emphasis that DHS has placed on speed for asylum seekers, this will be like the former process — designed in a way that will systematically fail to elicit people’s best asylum claims.”

A better system, Caldarone said, would give people a year before their asylum hearing to prepare and then quickly provide a decision as to whether they could stay or be deported. That would allow people to heal from trauma and lead to fewer appeals, he argued.

The backlog of pending immigration court cases has exploded in recent months, reaching nearly 1.6 million by December, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan data research center at Syracuse University. It has tripled since 2016.

Under the new system, asylum officers will grant decisions within roughly 90 days. Immigration court appeals will generally take another 90 days, officials said.

During his first year in office, Biden took roughly 300 executive actions on immigration, nearly a third of them to reverse course on Trump-era policies, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

One area he did not change: For the last two years, the border has been closed to the vast majority of asylum seekers under a restrictive pandemic-era policy initiated by former President Trump. The policy, known as Title 42, invokes a 1944 public health statute to quickly expel migrants who attempt to enter the U.S. in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Among more than 1.7 million people detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the southwest border during fiscal year 2021, 61% were expelled under Title 42, according to agency data.

Experts say those rapid removals under Title 42 resulted in an increase in unauthorized crossings into the U.S. by people who would have otherwise requested asylum at an official port of entry. The rapid removals back to Mexico also led to repeated border crossing attempts by migrants — inflating the number of Customs and Border Protection apprehensions.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formally ended that policy for children traveling without a parent, saying their expulsion “is not warranted to protect the public health.” Immigrant advocates and Democratic congressional leaders have argued that the policy is illegal and have ramped up calls in recent weeks to also end its application to adults traveling alone and parents traveling with their children.

But asylum seekers will see no substantial changes, even once the updates are in place, until the CDC decides to end Title 42 entirely. In recent weeks, as the response to the pandemic has changed within the U.S., federal officials have begun planningfor the possible end of the policy.

The asylum overhaul will be implemented in phases, though officials said they have yet to decide where to roll out the initial program and whether to target any specific population, such as single adults or families.

On a call with reporters last week, Mayorkas said the phased implementation of the new asylum system is designed to avoid straining Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency has teetered on bankruptcy, he added, and was “virtually dismantled” under the Trump administration, whose immigration approach deterred many immigrants from filing applications before the pandemic further reduced the agency’s caseload.

“We have to be mindful of the resource constraints of the asylum division in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as we rebuild that agency,” he said, noting that the agency is almost entirely funded by application fees.

Under the proposed rule, the agency estimated it would need to hire 800 new employees and spend $180 million to be able to handle 75,000 cases annually.

Before the pandemic, migrants encountered near the border were screened by agency asylum officers for fear of persecution. Those who passed the initial screening would have their cases moved to the immigration courts, where a judge would decide whether they qualified for asylum or another form of protection and could stay in the U.S.

Meanwhile, they were detained or released pending a final court hearing. Immigrants facing deportation don’t have the same right to a publicly funded attorney as people in criminal proceedings, and most represent themselves.

To qualify for asylum, immigrants must prove a fear of persecution in their home country based on one of five protected categories: political opinion, race, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group.

Officials hope the new asylum policy will curb unauthorized migration.

“The ability to stay in the United States for years waiting for an initial decision may motivate unauthorized border crossings by individuals who otherwise would not have sought to enter the United States and who lack a meritorious protection claim,” the rule states.

The goal is also to reduce the stress for those who ultimately receive asylum or other immigration protections, according to the rule, as currently, “they are left in limbo as to whether they might still be removed, are unable to lawfully work until their asylum application has been granted or has remained pending for several months, and are unable to petition for qualified family members, some of whom may still be at risk of harm.”

Source: Biden administration announces asylum system overhaul: What you need to know

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Organization of Islamic Cooperation Accused of Ignoring Uyghur Muslims in China

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

Indeed. Much easier to other countries than China despite the ongoing oppression and indeed genocide of Uyghur Muslims:

A U.S. declaration that China has committed genocide and crimes against humanity against its mainly Muslim minority in western Xinjiang province appears to have had little impact on the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which this week honored Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a high-level forum.

Invited by host Pakistan, Wang attended the 48th session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Islamabad as a special guest and spoke at the summit opening. He followed up Thursday with a surprise visit to Afghanistan, whose Taliban-led interim government is eager for Chinese investment and support.

The confluence of events was distressing to the Campaign for Uyghurs, a Washington-based rights group, which condemned both Wang’s attendance at the summit and OIC’s silence on China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority, including mass incarceration in so-called reeducation camps.

“It was appalling to see that Pakistan invited Wang Yi as a ‘guest of honor,’ while Uyghur Muslims do not have the right to identify as Muslims or practice Islam,” Campaign for Uyghurs said on its website.

According to Hasan Askari, an international affairs analyst, Pakistan’s invitation to the Chinese foreign minister at the OIC summit as an observer is part of an OIC tradition that allows the host country to invite high level diplomats from non-member OIC countries.

The U.S. accused China of genocide and crimes against humanity in the Muslim majority Xinjiang region in western China, including forced labor, sterilization of Muslim women and arbitrary detention of more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims in internment camps.

Beijing denies the allegations and says people of all ethnic groups live happily in Xinjiang.

The OIC summit addressed the plight of Rohingya Muslims as well as Muslims in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere, but mostly ignored the Uyghur genocide in China, the Campaign for Uyghurs said.

Only Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu brought it up.

“In China, Uyghurs and other Muslims have difficulties protecting their religious rights and cultural identity,” Cavusoglu said at the OIC meeting. “Is it right to ignore the situation of the Uyghurs?”

Turkish politicians are usually the most outspoken defenders of Uyghur rights among Muslim politicians, said Robert Bianchi, professor of international law at the University of Chicago, because of their ethnic and cultural ties throughout Central Asia.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party “is particularly sensitive to demands from right-wing nationalists who are junior partners in his governing coalition,” Bianchi said. “He can’t survive without their support, so he often agrees to accept more Uyghur refugees and to speak out against Chinese repression.”

At the summit, Wang said that his country pledged to provide 300 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Islamic countries.

According to Abdulhakim Idris, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Uyghur Studies, many Muslim-majority countries receive billions of dollars from China in the name of financial investment.

“By receiving billions of dollars from China, these countries are not only forced to remain quiet on the genocidal atrocities against Uyghur Muslims in East Turkistan but also commanded from Beijing to do whatever the PRC wants,” Idris told VOA, calling Xinjiang by the Uyghurs’ preferred name of East Turkistan.

Source: Organization of Islamic Cooperation Accused of Ignoring Uyghur Muslims in China

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#COVID-19 Immigration Effects: January 2022 Update

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

This presentation provides the latest operational data on permanent and temporary immigration to Canada, broken down by major programs and countries, along with citizenship and visitor visas.

The government’s focus remains largely on Permanent Residents and “feeder groups” such as international students and other temporary residents.

While minimal progress has been made on reducing backlogs, operational levels have largely recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

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A ‘troubling narrative’ has been revealed within Canada’s system to help abused migrant workers

2022/03/25 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, small sample size (30) from British Columbia, but one that largely confirms other accounts:

Being charged an illegal recruitment fee wasn’t an abuse, because the temporary foreign worker had made the payment “voluntarily,” wrote an immigration officer.

Neither was it an abuse when another migrant worker was terminated after complaining about a work condition, nor when an alleged victim of workplace abuse failed to first lodge an official complaint against the boss with employment standards enforcement authorities.

These are some of the examples cited in a study released Wednesday examining the barriers faced by vulnerable migrant workers in accessing a federal program meant to protect those who have experienced abuse or who are at risk of abuse at work.

“The written reasons for decisions reveal a troubling narrative with respect to the lack of understanding of the unique vulnerabilities and complex legal issues faced by workers and the difficulty that workers have in accessing justice,” said researcher and study co-author Amanda Aziz, a staff lawyer of British Columbia’s Migrant Workers Centre.

“The written decisions showed a great deal of inconsistency and confusion around what an immigration officer considers and what constitutes abuse.”

Launched in June 2019, the Vulnerable Worker Open Work Permit program lets abused migrant workers apply for an open work permit, so they could leave an abusive, exploitative or dangerous workplace.

According to the study, 2,481 applications were made under the special program up to July 31, 2021. Of those, 2,345 were processed and 57.1 per cent were granted.

Researchers reviewed immigration officers’ written reasons for decisions for 30 separate worker applications submitted in British Columbia under the special program. The workers came from 12 different countries and the majority were employed in agriculture, in-home care work, or restaurant and food service.

Almost all of the 30 applicants reported financial abuse, including unpaid wages, unpaid overtime and excessive work hours, payment of a wage less than the wage listed on their employment contract, and the payment of recruitment fees.

Seventy per cent said they suffered psychological abuse, including verbal insults, threats and discriminatory comments, while 30 per cent experienced physical abuse. Three reported sexual abuse by their employer; two said they were forced to perform sexual acts; and one was coerced to send pictures of a sexual nature by text to the employer.

Although 21 of the 30 applications were approved at first instance — and four more after appeals, the report found immigration officials took a very narrow view of what constituted a financial abuse and that psychological abuse was accepted only in cases where significant evidence was presented.

While cases involving unpaid overtime and excessive work hours or unpaid wages were often recognized as a form of financial abuse by an officer, the collection of recruitment fees in order to secure employment — an outlawed practice in Canada — was not.

Kishorkumar Ahir was hired by a family in Vancouver as an in-home caregiver for an elderly man in 2018 after paying $7,000 to an immigration consultant to secure him a job. He said he was later reassigned to work as a labourer at the employer’s tire shops even though his work permit restricted him to working as caregiver only.

The 46-year-old worker from India said he had no choice and complied with the employer’s request. Although he was found to have paid the recruitment fee, an officer in refusing his open-work-permit application concluded that he had “willingly paid the fee” and there was “no indication that he was coerced into paying the fee.”

“Worst of all, the information I shared in my application about the work my first employer required me to do … was shared with the Canada Border Services Agency,” said Ahir, who was subsequently accused by the federal agency of breaking the rules by working outside his caregiving job.

“I have recently been issued a removal order because of not telling immigration about this work before I applied for my first work permit.”

The report identified other fairness issues with the process: workers interviewed by immigration officials for their application can’t be accompanied by legal counsel and must provide their own interpreters, who cannot be friends or relatives.

Even if an abused worker is successful in obtaining an open-work permit, it is typically issued for 12 months only. During that time, the worker must find a new employer to sponsor an employer-restricted work permit in order to stay here, which exposes them to further abuse due to their reliance on an employer to keep their status.

“This system makes migrant workers uniquely vulnerable to abuse and fearful of speaking out about any abuse they face in their workplace for fear of losing their job,” Aziz said.

Source: A ‘troubling narrative’ has been revealed within Canada’s system to help abused migrant workers

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Australia: Multicultural media is a strong engagement lever, not a gimmick

2022/03/25 Leave a comment

While from a multicultural marketing perspective, still valid:

In the land of public relations, everybody aims for tremendous reach. Most of the time, that means mainstream media. However, communicators often forget that the type of audiences you reach matter – the old “quality versus quantity” debate.

As a communicator, it confuses me when others in my field palm off multicultural media as insignificant. This outdated contention does a great disservice to the Australian landscape and means that crucial audience segments are not being met with messages.

Multicultural media can achieve something that mainstream media cannot. It provides and caters to a range of diverse voices and communities, and those with different backgrounds – such as migrants who now mistrust mainstream news – are more likely to engage with media appropriately tailored to the unique aspects of their lives.

The global pandemic reminded us that culturally, linguistically, and religiously diverse communities don’t engage with – or trust – media in the same way as other audiences. Australia’s history of mis-representation, racist and dangerous reporting has created widespread scepticism toward conventional news channels. Examples are never far away: consider the racialising of Melbourne’s “African gang problem”, where the media have consistently targeted and vilified the South Sudanese community, eliciting an “Apology of the Year” recognition by ABC TV’s Media Watch. Such media efforts create a dangerous potential to tarnish communities, encourage further discrimination and violence, and disastrously impact social cohesion.

Multicultural media has often been labelled a small initiative, lacking the style of mainstream reporting – it is underfunded, and usually run on a volunteer basis. It’s seen as a “cute” service for nostalgic migrants, as a means of segregating people into cultural ghettos of communication, or simply tacked on as a “nice to have” on communications plans.

However, this is a gross misrepresentation of the powerful force that is multicultural and community-focused media.

Media that is community-focused and community-centric is developed in an appropriate, respectful, and impactful fashion. Through mediums like print, radio, videos and online news, community initiatives are translated to the right audiences.

Community initiatives employing these mediums are used to discuss problems, and offer solutions faced by diverse communities, with adequate consideration for their cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds and values. Through an array of opportunities, multicultural media allows you to connect meaningfully and effectively with different groups in a way that mainstream media cannot, or will not.

So, the next time you are planning a communications campaign, consider the following.

1. Australia is a country rich with diversity and culture, it is an oversight to not cater towards the many communities within our country.

Australia has a long history of multiculturalism and is now home to Australians who identify with over 270 ancestries. Over 7 million people identify as coming from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Over one quarter of Australia’s population was born overseas. This rich, culturally diverse population is one of our greatest strengths in illustrating successful and harmonious multiculturalism. Australia has one of the highest numbers of migrants in the world and the highest immigration rates – accounting for 30 per cent of the world’s population, the greatest proportion among western countries.

Multicultural media dates back to the 1800s in Australia: the first non-English language newspaper published in Australia was a bi-lingual German newspaper. Subsequently, there were radio commercials in the 1900s that led to the foundation of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). Their contemporary tagline, Six Billion Stories and Counting, reflects the value of SBS’s extraordinary efforts to the Australian multicultural media landscape for its cultural and creative diversity.

Today, the multicultural media landscape has expanded to over 100 community radio stations, in over 100 languages and media organisations from different cultural and religious groups, that broadcast news in print and online, in English and other languages.

2. Multicultural media is a tremendous opportunity for mindful and appropriate messaging.

Multicultural media channels have developed historically to become more mindful, influential, dynamic and pervasive in the Australian media landscape. It ensures that there is more authenticity in stories and media reporting.

Community-focused outlets and channels can facilitate a sense of belonging and social cohesion among first and subsequent generation-migrants, and drive further connection between migrants of CALD backgrounds and other social groups, especially in their local communities.

Over time, multicultural media outlets have taken matters and public affairs into their own hands, finding ways to tell their stories in their own words, empowering their community by speaking up for themselves.

Years ago, the narrative was only one viewpoint. Today, multiple viewpoints, perspectives and opinions are now shared across print, radio, video, and online, underscoring the importance of freedom of speech, and our privilege to have it in Australia.

By providing diverse and unique communities with trusted media, we can ensure that they don’t miss crucial information, while highlighting to the general Australian public that different cultures and communities face various issues – from systemic racism and discrimination – to limited access to vital resources.

3. Multicultural media fills in the gaps that mainstream media overlooks.

Through multicultural media, we are provided the opportunity to access untapped networks comprising organisations, initiatives and – most importantly – people. There are entire audiences rich in cultural diversity, background and history that aren’t consuming or appearing in mainstream news. Incredible stories are getting missed, important audiences are being ignored, and your campaign efforts are lacking a more well-rounded, inclusive and holistic approach to communications.

Off the back of the pandemic, it is unsurprising that Australians are gradually becoming more selective in their news, turning away from mainstream sources. Globally,only one in two people trust the media, with this metric in Australia experiencing one of the biggest drops over the last year.

It’s thus undeniable that community-specific media wields a unique power. Its unbiased, sincere, nuanced and grassroots reporting means that more Australians will opt for such channels. It offers a significant and meaningful contribution to the Australian media landscape.

As multicultural media continues to expand rapidly, the quality and content of these outlets has been noticed nationally in the last decade. The Australian government, in each state, has Multicultural Media Awards to showcase excellence in sharing stories and news in multicultural media outlets operating on limited budgets. The awards recognise the valuable contributions from multicultural media platforms that promote a united, harmonious and inclusive society.

Source: Multicultural media is a strong engagement lever, not a gimmick

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Holder: Appointing a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court opens the door to better jurisprudence

2022/03/25 Leave a comment

New term for me, “affective appeal,” that captures the importance of representation in public institutions and elsewhere:

In an October, 2013, address at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law lecture theatre, I showed students a “class photo” of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court and challenged them to “spot the difference.” It wasn’t a case for Sherlock Holmes: of the 11 justices, all were white, and only one was a woman – the solitary, if indomitable, Baroness Brenda Hale.

A decade later, my colleagues across the Atlantic, thankfully, do not have to play this game with their students. Three sitting United States Supreme Court justices are women, two are non-white, and the country is now on the cusp of another historic judicial appointment. On Tuesday, U.S. Court of Appeals Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, began her confirmation process in the U.S. Senate. If her appointment is successful, Mr. Biden will not only have fulfilled a major campaign promise by putting the first African-American woman on the Court; he also will have acknowledged a core truth about how legal institutions should work.

Far from being a tokenistic nod to left-wing identity politics (as right-wing critics inevitably will contend), Judge Jackson’s appointment would reinforce an essential but undertheorized feature of well-functioning legal systems: affective appeal. The makeup of a country’s highest court should resemble the makeup of the country.

A critical mass of public buy-in is an indispensable ingredient in an effective legal system. Yet to the extent that the psychological dimensions of law have been considered at all, the focus has been on what social scientists call the “cognitive” side – law’s appeal to participants’ reason – rather than on law as an “affective institution” that is capable of appealing to participants’ emotions. Following psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s well-known schema, legal rules and institutions need to appeal to both of the brain’s thought processes: System Two (“slow,” analytical and theoretical thinking) as well as System One (“fast,” instinctive and intuitional thinking).

The wiring of our brains is a legacy of humanity’s origins in small tribes and kin networks, where trust was largely limited to one’s in-group. As a result, we tend to have far more immediate affective (emotional) connections to people who look “like us.” Under the right conditions, however, personal trust in an in-group member can spill over to impersonal trust in a larger institution.

As linguist George Lakoff of the University of California, Berkeley, and Mark Johnson of the University of Oregon point out, we are all symbolic thinkers. We live by metaphors. Contemporary talk of inclusive institutions and institutional diversity is not just fashionable sloganeering. Rather, it addresses a central need in any complex society. We need institutional structures that can reflect the experiences of a broad cross-section of stakeholders. The reason the Supreme Court and other key institutions should look like the country they serve is not just a matter of politics. It is important for their own proper functioning.

In a highly divided country like the U.S., the legal legacy of slavery and racism is not some old scar. It is an open wound, visible in practices like redlining and voter disenfranchisement, and in tragedies like the police murder of George Floyd. Under these fraught circumstances, the appointment of an African-American woman to the highest court can help to confer the institution with legitimacy in the eyes of a key, long-alienated constituency.

Judge Jackson brings just the right mix of objectivity and empathy to the job. It is to her credit that she has been deemed simultaneously elitist, by dint of her Harvard education, but also suspect, owing to a distant uncle’s incarceration for a nonviolent drug offence. She also has a long track record as a public defender – a first for the Supreme Court.

As critical legal scholars have noted for generations, legal institutions have a mixed record (at best) of delivering justice for the disenfranchised. As such, they have no right to assume their own moral authority. Rather, they need to earn it, which requires constant reinvention.

Judge Jackson is emphatic that she does not view all legal issues through the lens of race. Even so, her nomination raises an important issue of institutional design. By including a representative of the country’s most legally neglected community in one of its most highly respected institutions, the U.S. can set an example internationally.

As in television, cinema, and comedy, faithful representation makes for better storytelling. The mosaic of perspectives introduced into a university department, a marketing department, or a police department by more diverse hiring is not just an affirmative action cliché; it provides the basis for better performance. Similarly, Judge Jackson’s appointment to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court is not just good politics; it provides the basis for better jurisprudence.

Source: Appointing a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court opens the door to better jurisprudence

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