Long suppressed and forcibly assimilated, Sámi people in Sweden get an apology 30 years in the making

2021/11/29 Leave a comment

Of interest and the influence of and parallel with Canadian experience:

In Uppsala Cathedral, the heart of Swedish Christianity, Archbishop Antje Jackelén sat this week before a circle of Sámi leaders in traditional dress and the television cameras of Sweden’s state broadcaster, listing the past crimes of her church.

“You have told us about forced Christianization and Swedish colonialism. Sámi culture was denied,” Jackelén said, in Swedish. “Today, we acknowledge this and, on behalf of the Church of Sweden, I apologize.”

Wednesday’s apology service in Uppsala, the culmination of more than 30 years of discussions and advocacy, marked a major step forward for reconciliation in Sweden, where the Indigenous Sámi people continue to fight for self-determination and recognition of past wrongs committed by church and state.

Having studied the Canadian experience of reconciliation, church and Sámi figures alike emphasized that the apology must be followed by concrete actions, and came with no expectation of forgiveness.

“As we apologize to you today, we cannot determine how you will receive this apology. It is not our place to demand to know when a response will be given,” Jackelén said in her speech.

“While we wait, we pray to God … that we do not repeat past mistakes.”

As one of its commitments, the church pledged to acknowledge the importance of Sámi spirituality, and even incorporate it into Christian worship after centuries of exclusion and demonization.

Ingrid Inga, the chair of the church’s internal Sámi Council, called it “the starting point of a new relationship between the Church of Sweden and the Sámi people.”

Crimes of assimilation

The Sámi are indigenous to the vast forests and tundra of Arctic Europe, traditionally herding reindeer, hunting and fishing across Norway, Sweden, Finland and parts of northern Russia. For centuries, they have been divided by the borders of those countries, which all embarked on differing programs of forced assimilation.

Though the earliest Christian missionaries are believed to have visited Sápmi, the traditional territory of the Sámi, in the 11th century, Sámi say the church’s process of forced Christianization truly began some 500 years later, when the Reformation unified church and state.

In an 1,100-page anthology produced for the Church of Sweden in 2019 — seen as an essential precondition to the apology — historians documented the way the church supported the state in the process of erasing and suppressing Sámi identity.

Christian preachers condemned Sámi religion as devil worship, banning the joik, a form of spiritual singing used by noaidi, or Sámi shamans, to communicate with the spirit world.

The 17th century saw a wave of puritanical witch trials, in which Swedish church and state authorities waged an intense campaign against Sámi worship, which they branded as sorcery. One noaidi, Lars Nilsson, was burned at the stake, and many others were tried for witchcraft.

In pursuit of converts, the Swedish church produced the first writing in the Sámi languages, in translated bibles. But by the 20th century, it was actively suppressing the Sámi languages in church-run schools.

Reindeer herders were segregated to subpar “nomad schools,” which sought to “protect” them from civilization as an “inferior race.”

As in Canada, these church-run schools became theatres for humiliating scientific experiments and clerical abuse. Racial biologists also conspired with bishops to dig up the remains of Sámi children and elders — many of which still sit in museum collections across Europe.

Other Sámi, deemed not sufficiently nomadic by Swedish authorities, were forced to assimilate, driving divisions in the community that exist to this day.

Christianity an ‘Indigenous religion’

Yet today, many Sámi are still devoutly Christian. A 19th-century revival movement produced an Indigenous form of Lutheranism that transformed communities damaged by the suppression of traditional activities.

“Many Sámi think that Christianity is their Indigenous religion, because the Sámi have for centuries been dealing with Christianity,” said Helga West, a Sámi theologian who studies the reconciliation processes underway in the three Nordic countries. (Her Sámi name is Biennaš-Jon Jovnna Piera Helga.)

“Yet… there are many Sámi who don’t want to be involved with these churches at all.”

Thomas Colbengtson, originally from Tärnaby, was raised in the Lutheran Church and attended a nomad school. He says the experience left him with a “mixed feeling” about his own identity.

“In a way, you’ve got double guilt — guilt [for] being Sámi, guilt [for] being Swedish, guilt [for] perhaps not practising Christian religion, guilt [for] being Christian…. That’s the sensitive thing to talk about.”

In a former glass factory in the suburbs of Stockholm, Colbengtson wrestles with that tension as a Sámi artist. His most recent work, based on a noaidi drum, will be displayed near the altar of the Swedish church.

“Part of it is provocation,” he said, “and … part is to visualize Sámi presence in the area, and Sámi culture that [they have] tried to erase.”

Spiritual destruction — and renewal

Guided by the Canadian truth and reconciliation process, the church has largely focused on documenting historical wrongs. But West says it has not yet come to terms with how it has forever transformed Sámi spirituality.

“Christianity in general brought this hierarchical and linear view of the world that was very different from the Sámi cosmic vision, that was pluralistic,” she said. “They were forced to think differently of the world, of their ancestors, of their practices, that were labelled as pagan and backward.”

Some Christian Sámi have managed to reconcile these identities within themselves. Nilla and Nik Märak, two sisters from Jokkmokk, learned from their father, Johan, a renowned Sámi priest, who broke barriers by bringing joiking into the church for the first time.

“He used to say, ‘God was with the Sámi before the church,'” Nik said with a laugh.

“He knew that by … being a minister in the church, and bringing the two worlds together, he could, just by his presence, actually go quite a long way [toward] reconciliation,” Nilla said.

For Nilla, who handed out communion wafers at Wednesday’s service in Uppsala, the church’s recognition of past wrongs is an important step in and of itself.

“A huge part of reconciliation, and the healing that will come, we hope … is to realize that there has been damage done,” she said. “The Sámi religion has been damaged, and the Sámi soul has been damaged.”

Wednesday’s service included eight concrete commitments to reverse the historic erasure of Sámi culture, meant to counter early perceptions among Sámi that public apologies, like those in Canada, would be merely performative.

Among them are pledges to preach in the Sámi language, educate congregations about past crimes and make Sámi traditions a more visible part of Christian worship.

“I hope that the Sámi people really trust the Church of Sweden, that it’s for real, that we want Sámi spirituality as part of the church,” said Bishop Åsa Nyström, whose Luleå diocese covers the northernmost third of Sweden and includes many Sámi communities. “It is so important the Sámi people can have priests and deacons … from their own people.”

State absent

Some say there is still more the church could do. Northern dioceses like Nyström’s derive income from vast forests they manage. But Åsa Larsson Blind, vice-president of the transnational Saami Council, says they do not pursue international certifications that would require co-management with the Sámi.

To critics, the greatest shortcoming of Wednesday’s church apology may be that the Swedish government was nowhere to be seen.

“It’s only the church doing the work,” said Nilla Märak. “The Swedish government is doing nothing. They’re barely even recognizing that there is a need for a reconciliation process.”

Many of the crimes documented by the church were committed in service of a colonizing Swedish state, which sought to push Sámi people off profitable land and divide them with borders.

Yet the state’s own reconciliation process has barely begun. First discussed more than 15 years ago, the Swedish government only this month announced a truth commission, which will be focused primarily on fact-finding over its four-year mandate.

“It’s very, very important, but it isn’t a reconciliation process,” said Nyström.

Meanwhile, the Swedish government continues to fight Sámi reindeer herders in court for the right to build mines and power plants on their lands. It has refused to ratify international conventions recognizing the rights of Indigenous people.

A landmark Supreme Court decision in the Sámi village of Girjas appears to have established a duty to consult with Sámi people. But the government continues to interpret it narrowly.

“They are dodging the whole issue,” said Larsson Blind. “And by not addressing the issues, they are letting business as usual … just go on.”

As part of its evidence in court, the government’s representative read an 1884 statement that said Sámi herders live “on a less cultured level” and must “give way to the more civilized people.”

Two ministries within the Swedish government responsible for Sámi issues declined CBC requests for comment.

Making an ally of the church

Many of those present at Wednesday’s service hope the apology will be a turning point for the church, making it a crucial ally in the push for restitution from the government.

“I think that the church having the platform and the voice in Sweden that they have, they can actually play a huge part in this,” said Larsson Blind.

Within the church, meanwhile, the long and difficult work begins to regain trust with Sámi Christians and their communities.

“In some time … the [Sámi people may] take this apology and forgive the church,” said Inga, the Sámi church council’s chair. “But this is not the right time for that.”

Source: Long suppressed and forcibly assimilated, Sámi people in Sweden get an apology 30 years in the making

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Saunders: The pandemic exposed Canada’s inefficient immigration system. It needs to be scrapped and rebuilt

2021/11/29 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

For a surgeon who had been risking his life in pandemic-hit Canadian hospitals performing organ transplants, the April 14 invitation was a welcome gift. Despite his highly sought-after, life-saving skills and the risks he was taking to do his job, he’d so far had no pathway to becoming Canadian.

Then Marco Mendicino, the immigration minister at the time, announcedthat Canada would give permanent residency, and thus eventually citizenship, to 90,000 immigrants, refugees and foreign students currently living here on temporary visas and mostly doing in-person jobs deemed “essential.”

It was one part of a broad goal, announced earlier this year, to meet an ambitious target of 401,000 new Canadians in 2021, despite then-closed borders, mainly by drawing on the huge number of people already living and working here.

It sounds good – but the pandemic months have taught us that Canada does not have the immigration system to deliver it.

Almost immediately after that announcement, those invitations collided with a bureaucracy – including a Byzantine and outdated set of federal and provincial immigration rules – that all but prevented those worthy goals from becoming realities.

The transplant doctor soon noticed. He had been slowly accumulating points under Canada’s main immigration system, known as Express Entry, which grants points for things such as education and language fluency and requires full-time work experience in Canada. (Surgeons are classified as self-employed, so have a harder time earning those points.)

While the invitation was a gift, the rules all but prevented him from accepting it. His application – which had to be begun afresh, with no relationship to the existing paper trail of his Express Entry application – had to be personally submitted at a specific time on a weekday. This hours-long procedure on a newly created and deeply dysfunctional and crash-prone web portal was nearly impossible for a working surgeon. For some reason it forbade lawyers and immigration agents from helping, and reportedly barred applicants from working during the application process, which could drag on for months.

The long-standing rules also required him to submit the results of a fluency test in English or French. His language skills weren’t in doubt – you can’t be a high-level surgeon without them – but the testing centres had weeks-long delays, and the minister’s invitation had an hours-long application window.

Many people filed applications without the language test, hoping it could be added informally later. Months later, they found their claims were rejected without any communication from the department, and the whole system had to start again. It was an ordeal for a privileged surgeon; for the nurses and home-care workers for whom the program was intended, it was far worse.

“In 25 years of practice I have never seen the client service as poor as it is now,” says Barbara Jo Caruso, the surgeon’s immigration lawyer. “I think there is a fundamental disconnect right now. … The department needs to change the way front-line workers work, so they can be facilitative and solve problems by making a call. Otherwise they’re wasting enormous amounts of human resources doing the same things over and over.”

The major problem, says Andrew Griffith, a former director-general of Canada’s immigration department, is “not understanding the service needs of the target population.”

In essence, Ottawa is trying to force a growth-oriented policy through a haphazard, enormously complex and often uncommunicative set of provincial and federal bureaucracies that were constructed over the last five decades to restrict immigration and control numbers, and to administer a range of often contradictory immigration programs.

The result has been chaotic. Even though experienced front-line health workers ought to be the most desirable new Canadians, Ottawa was not able to come close to its target of 20,000 of them – after the deadline passed this summer, only 7,155 had reportedly been able to get their names on the list. Tens of thousands more simply could not manage to apply.

Other invitations suffered the opposite problem: The target of 40,000 student-visa holders who’ve completed their degrees was met in fewer than two days. Then a computer failure reportedly caused thousands more to be let into the system in a mess of false messaging and panicked confusion, so Ottawa had to give another 7,300 applicants admission.

Despite its high annual immigration targets (which will continue to rise), Canada has become notorious for its inability to turn people into immigrants and citizens without years of unnecessary delay and reams of procedures that can’t be navigated without a lawyer – even if you’re a nanny earning less than minimum wage. Ottawa currently says it has 1.8 million immigration applications stuck in the queue, many lost on the desks of an understaffed and overburdened public service.

A new Immigration Minister, Sean Fraser, was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a few weeks ago. He ought to have one job: to scrap and rebuild the entire system, reducing the off-putting hodgepodge of outdated programs and procedures with a single, understandable and sensible immigration pathway for all applicants that actually serves the country’s needs. If nothing else, the pandemic months have taught us that we need to start afresh.

Source: Opinion: The pandemic exposed Canada’s inefficient immigration system. It needs to be scrapped and rebuilt

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A more independent Canadian foreign policy requires embracing bilingualism

2021/11/26 Leave a comment

While I will leave to others to comment on the foreign policy aspect,  was struck by this para:

“No doubt, Canadians of diverse backgrounds have important contributions to bring to the foreign service. If a candidate brings energy and intellectual heft to the table but cannot speak one of the official languages, this should not constitute an absolute barrier to employment. But those recruits should be required to spend the first year or two of their careers focused almost exclusively on language training.”

Grudging in tone and ignorant in substance. All foreign service officers must be bilingual (CCC) or undertake language training to become so. One can, of course, debate whether CCC is truly bilingual but the requirement is clearly there.

Knowledge of other languages is an asset given the cost of language training, particularly for more difficult languages (I benefitted from Arabic language training during my time at GAC but only achieved an beginner-to-intermediate level):

In the recent controversy over Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau’s language skills, his defenders have advanced the usual arguments: English is the language of international business; knowing French is an asset, but not essential.

Of course, at issue is not whether a unilingual anglophone can be an effective CEO; it is that an inadequate embrace of bilingualism is a national failure. However, a less often appreciated fact is that Canada’s place on the world stage also depends on us embracing our bilingual history and character. More than ever, Canada’s national sovereignty in a changing world needs to be expressed both domestically and internationally, in French and in English.

Many Canadians may feel relieved by the declining visibility of last century’s tortuous national unity debates. However, this has come at the cost of our commitment to conceive of Canada as a shared political community. Our future as a country depends on the ability of francophones to feel that all of Canada is their home.

Moreover, Canada’s core national unity and identity dilemma remains a challenge. But today, it must be addressed in the context of a more complex international environment

Canada’s decades-long national unity struggles unfolded against a mostly consistent international backdrop: the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, during which our country was fortunate to be neighbours with the world’s unquestioned hegemon. By contrast, in today’s world, change is the norm. The rules that will inform the international order of the coming decades are currently being contested and are far from being settled.

In this new and uncertain era, our interests will not always align with those of our southern neighbour. While Washington may wish to compete with Moscow and Beijing in a bid to maintain its position as the world’s pre-eminent power, Ottawa may legitimately fear that unbridled great power competition will destabilize the rules-based international institutions that have buttressed Canada’s economic prosperity and international position for decades.

By embracing its bilingual identity on the world stage more fully, Canada would distinguish itself from its American neighbour and counter its growing reputation as a “vassal state” of the United States.

Canada requires a more independent foreign policy – one in which we are allied to the US but not necessarily aligned on every file of importance. This, in turn, warrants a term-setting mentality: rather than reacting to threats as they unfold, we must identify and stand by our own interests and vision for international order, even at the cost of occasional disagreements with our allies.

We currently lack the foreign policy framework necessary to develop and sustain such an approach. Looking ahead, a renewed commitment to bilingualism – both in Ottawa and among the population at large – can help to change that. And while some assert that the task of enhancing the diversity and representativeness of Canada’s federal institutions should supersede bilingualism, these goals are not mutually exclusive.

No doubt, Canadians of diverse backgrounds have important contributions to bring to the foreign service. If a candidate brings energy and intellectual heft to the table but cannot speak one of the official languages, this should not constitute an absolute barrier to employment. But those recruits should be required to spend the first year or two of their careers focused almost exclusively on language training.

If individuals wish to join our foreign service, or the federal public service more broadly, they must be willing to advance the interests of Canada. Fostering an independent foreign policy is one such interest – and one that cannot occur in a vacuum. It will rely upon the development of a national strategic approach and school of thought fit for a world in transition, replete with its own vocabulary.

Such a task must, in large part, be pursued through the use of both of our own distinctive national languages. The growing Americanization of our political and intellectual culture – owing to factors such as the gravitational pull of U.S. media and the dominance in policy circles of American concepts – casts doubt on whether a Canada that only thinks in English will ever be able to think for itself.

At a time of significant global change, a strengthened commitment to bilingualism would not only infuse our national project with renewed energy at home, but also signal that Canada is willing to set the terms of its international position.

Jean Charest is a partner at McCarthy Tétrault and was premier of Quebec from 2003 to 2012. Zachary Paikin is a research fellow at the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, a Toronto-based international affairs think tank. Stéphanie Chouinard is associate professor of political science at the Royal Military College and a fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

Source: A more independent Canadian foreign policy requires embracing bilingualism

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Canada’s immigration minister says he wants to look into ‘issue’ of discrimination and bias within department 

2021/11/26 Leave a comment

Immigration is essentially discriminatory in terms of who we select. The challenge is to ensure that the criteria are as objective and neutral as possible with respect to country of origin:

Canada’s immigration minister says he wants to look into the “issue” of discrimination and unconscious bias within the department tasked with triaging and approving immigration requests to Canada.

“Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve become aware of this issue, and it’s something that I personally want to look into,” Immigration Minister Sean Fraser told reporters Wednesday as he entered a Liberal caucus meeting.

“There’s no secret that over the course of Canada’s history, unconscious bias and systemic racism have been a shameful part of Canada’s history over different aspects of the government’s operations. One of the things that we want to do is make sure that … this kind of unconscious bias doesn’t discriminate against people who come from a particular part of the world.”

Fraser was responding to questions on a recent report in Montreal newspaper Le Devoir that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is increasingly refusing foreign student applications from francophone African countries to Quebec, whereas English-speaking applicants are increasingly approved.

Immigration lawyers quoted in the report stated that IRCC recently refused applications from nearly 100 per cent of students from Maghreb and Western African countries applying to study in Quebec.

Fraser says he’s certain that the department was not consciously discriminating against those countries, but he still wants to look into it to make sure no other factors than those set out in immigration legislation are being considered when assessing requests.

“I certainly don’t think that there’s been a decision actively to pick one country over another. I think there’s certain factors that IRCC officials assess when they’re trying to admit more newcomers to Canada,” Fraser said.

“But it would be silly if I were to stand here and say that in a department of 11,000 people, if you look at the different operations of IRCC, to say that there is no discrimination,” he added.

He also promised to look at ways to bring more, not less, French-speaking students into Canada.

“International students are one of the groups that successfully integrate more and more so than just about any other group of newcomers,” Fraser said. “That’s a good thing, not just for the newcomer to Canada, but for our economy as well.”

Reporters then asked the newly-minted minister if it was ironic that there would be issues of discrimination and conscious or unconscious bias in the department tasked with handling foreign immigration.

“I think there’s a big distinction between what should be and what is,” the minister responded. “I think we need to constantly be looking to make sure that the public has faith in the system.”

In a follow-up statement, Fraser’s press secretary noted that the minister intended to continue the work already launched by IRCC to “eradicate racism” within the department, including creating a task force dedicated to the task “full-time,” mandatory unconscious bias training for employees and executives and appointing an “anti-racism representative” within each sector of the department.

Earlier this year, IRCC published a report based on focus groups of its employees that revealed that there were multiple and repeated reports of racist incidents within the workplace.

“Experiences of racism at IRCC include microaggressions, biases in hiring and promotion as well as biases in the delivery of IRCCs programs, policies and client service,” reads a summary of the findings, which were first reported by CBC last month.

“In addition, employees paint a picture of an organization fraught with challenges at the level of workplace culture” and a “history of racism going unchecked.”

For example, the report notes that an IRCC team leader was said to have “loudly” declared that colonialism was “good” and that “if ‘the natives’ wanted the land they should have just stood up.

In another case, non-racialized employees and supervisors were notoriously known to refer to parts of the department employing a higher number of racialized employees as “the ghetto.”

Participants also noted “widespread” internal references to certain African nations as “the dirty 30.”

Source: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/canadas-immigration-minister-says-he-wants-to-look-into-issue-of-potential-discrimination-and-bias-within-department

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Far-right groups like The Base will radicalise Australians until we confront their beliefs

2021/11/26 Leave a comment

Perspective of interest:

As one of the reporters who worked to uncover the operations of white power accelerationist group, The Base, I view the Australian federal government’s listing of them as a proscribed terror groupthis week as a belated but important recognition of the danger presented by white supremacist organisations.

But the national security state is a blunt instrument, and the apparatus of anti-terrorism is no substitute for making anti-racism principles central to a more inclusive democracy.

At its height, The Base was a transnational network of white nationalists who were seeking to collectively plan and prepare for what they saw as the inevitable collapse of liberal democracies they saw as decadent and corrupted by the values of feminism and multiculturalism.

In the Guardian US, I was the first reporter to identify Rinaldo Nazzaro, an American former US intelligence contractor now based in Russia, as the group’s founder and leader.

Previously he had only been known by the aliases Norman Spear and Roman Wolf.

An infiltrator gave me unprecedented access to the group’s internal communications. There I saw that although their group claimed only to be preparing for disaster, their conversations functioned to further indoctrinate members in a poisonous ideology of racial hatred, and the group’s relentlessly repeated fantasies of terroristic violence, for some of them, translated into real-world acts of destruction.

Members of the group are now facing trial for offences ranging from vandalising synagogues to assassination plots

Late last month, one member, former Canadian serviceman Patrik Mathews, was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for engaging in a terror plot with other members of the group.

Later, I showed how The Base’s efforts to recruit in Australia had led to them vetting Dean Smith in 2019, who was a federal election candidate for One Nation in Western Australia the same year. Smith ended up withdrawing his application and there is no evidence he has engaged in or planned any violence.

Source: Far-right groups like The Base will radicalise Australians until we confront their beliefs

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Germany to open up more to migrants under new coalition

2021/11/26 Leave a comment

Significant changes:

Germany’s incoming government plansto improve asylum seekers’ rights, facilitate immigration for skilled workers, and simplify the process of acquiring German nationality.

Immigration was a defining issue of Germany’s 2017 election campaign after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open the door to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in 2015.

Although it was not one of the main issues in this year’s election, it has moved up the political agenda again as thousands of migrants have tried to enter the European Union via Belarus in recent weeks.

A coalition deal agreed by the Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats (FDP) said the new government planned to make Germany a more appealing destination for migrants, while making life easier for asylum seekers who are willing to integrate

The alliance also agreed to introduce a law to make multiple citizenship possible. Becoming a German citizen generally requires a person to give up any other passports, though there are exemptions, including for citizens of other EU countries.

“As a rule, naturalization should be possible after five years, with special integration achievements after three years,” the document said. That compares to eight years and six years respectively at the moment

‘GUEST WORKERS’

The new law will grant children born in Germany to foreign parents German citizenship if one of the parents has been legally residing in Germany for five years.

The law targets Germany’s ‘guest-worker’ generation of migrants, who came from southern Europe and Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s and contributed to the postwar “economic miracle”.

Some could not be naturalized even after living in Germany for decades due to language requirements or because they did not want to give up their original citizenship.

The wording of a controversial naturalization prerequisite of “living according to German life style” will be replaced with clearer criteria in the new law.

Keen to tackle a shortage of skilled workers that has held back economic recovery, Germany’s new government will improve access to study and apprenticeship for foreigners. Visa processing will also be simplified.

Asylum seekers with temporary status will be able to obtain more secure residency and bring in their families after four to six years if they integrate well.

Guenter Burkhardt, managing director of PRO ASYL refugee rights group, welcomed the deal but said more was needed to improve asylum seekers’ rights.

“Deportations to war and crisis areas are not clearly excluded,” he said.

Source: Germany to open up more to migrants under new coalition

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Denmark Expands Citizenship Exam With ‘Danish Values’ Test

2021/11/26 Leave a comment

Ongoing trend of hardening Danish policies:

Denmark’s government has introduced changes to its citizenship exam, designed to test potential new citizens’ knowledge of Danish society, culture and history. The new questions will test an individual’s awareness of so-called “Danish values” on areas including free speech, gender equality and the relationship between law and religion.

It’s the latest step in a tightening of immigration policy by Denmark’s center-left government. The latest changes were passed in parliament thanks to support from opposition parties on the center-right rather than the usual allies to the left.

Led by Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democratic party, the minority government has adopted many policies long associated with parties far to the right of the political spectrum. Foreign Policy described the revamp as “one of the harshest refugee policies in the world.”

How Danish are you?

Introduced in 2015, the citizenship exam is designed to verify an individual’s knowledge of Danish society, culture and history as part of a citizenship application.

Previously, candidates had to score 32 out of 40 to pass. Candidates taking the new-look exam will have to score 36 out of 45, but also answer at least four of the five Danish values questions correctly. The time available for the PC-based test remains at 45 minutes but despite this, the government insists the test is no harder than before.

“I do not know what the politicians mean by Danish values,” one candidate told DR prior to taking the exam. One of the issues highlighted by critics is that there is no study material, meaning what is meant by “Danish values” is entirely subjective.

The government’s citizenship spokesperson Lars Aslan Rasmussen said the revised test will prove applicants understand the society they are applying to join.

“I actually think it’s very simple. Should girls be allowed to do the same things as boys, does Denmark have the death sentence? These are very simple questions which I think you should be able to answer if you live in Denmark,” he told DR.

How to become a citizen of Denmark

Becoming a Danish citizen requires far more than passing one exam, of course. The exam is just one part of the process. There is also a requirement to have lived in the country holding valid residence permits for up to nine years, with a positive recent employment history.

There are a few groups of people not required to take the citizenship exam. Exemptions are available for most people from Norway, Sweden or the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany. Children under 12 are also exempt.

Source: Denmark Expands Citizenship Exam With ‘Danish Values’ Test

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Yakabuski: Amid Quebec labour crunch, Legault spurns business demands for more immigrants

2021/11/25 Leave a comment

A natural experiment: as the rest of Canada increases immigration, Quebec adapts a more restrictive approach.

Will be interesting to contrast Quebec economic outcomes with those of the other provinces, particularly with respect to productivity and income, over the coming years:

Generations of Quebeckers were once forced to leave home for work, fleeing to Ontario or New England for a job, as their native province grappled with a chronic unemployment problem.

Until the turn of the century, Quebec’s jobless rate consistently exceeded the Canadian average by several percentage points. The spread with Ontario stood at as much as five points in the 1980s and never shrank below three points before 2000.

That was then. A falling birth rate, a fast-aging population and lower immigration levels than in the rest of Canada have since combined to make Quebec’s labour market the country’s second tightest after British Columbia.

Quebec’s unemployment rate stood at 5.6 per cent in October, compared with 7 per cent in Ontario and 6.7 per cent nationally. At 3.8 per cent, the unemployment rate in Quebec City was the lowest of any census metropolitan area in the country.

Premier François Legault considers this a nice problem to have.

“You have to admit it’s good news for [Quebec’s] 4.5 million workers because it puts upward pressure – and we’ve seen it for the past three years – on salaries,” the Premier said last week. “I’d rather have a lack of workers than a lack of jobs.”

Quebec businesses do not see it that way, however. They describe an acute labour shortage – there are currently more than 220,000 job vacancies in the province – as the biggest obstacle to economic growth. The province’s manufacturers have foregone $18-billion in revenues in the past two years because they could not find enough workers to fill orders. Many businesses are closing for lack of employees.

Last week, five of Quebec’s main business groups joined with the Union des municipalités du Québec to demand Mr. Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government boost immigration levels to prevent the current labour shortage from getting even worse. In addition to working with the federal government to accelerate the application process for temporary foreign workers, the groups want the province to permanently boost the number of permanent residents it accepts each year and do more to get newcomers to settle outside the greater Montreal area to more remote regions where the worker shortage has reached crisis levels.

Karl Blackburn, the head of the province’s main employers’ group, le Conseil du patronat du Québec (CPQ), called the province’s labour shortage “an economic catastrophe,” and called on Finance Minister Eric Girard to introduce new measures to address the labour crunch in next week’s fall economic statement.

Mr. Legault, who was elected in 2018 on a signature promise to temporarily cut immigration levels, continues to push back against such demands. The Premier emphasized automation, job training and digitization last week while outlining his government’s strategy for easing the labour shortage and boosting productivity.

Mr. Legault has made closing the wealth gap between his province and Ontario – Quebec’s per-capita gross domestic product remains about 13 per cent lower – his government’s top economic priority. As a result, he has insisted that bringing in more immigrants, who typically start off making less than the average full-time salary of $56,000, would only make this task harder.

“Immigration might be part of the solution, but we have to realize that, at 50,000 [immigrants] a year, we have reached our capacity for integration,” Mr. Legault said. “If we want the next generations to continue speaking French, there is a limit to the number of immigrants we can accept.”

Under a decades-old agreement with Ottawa, Quebec establishes its own immigration targets and selects economic immigrants. The federal government is responsible for choosing newcomers who come to the province as refugees or under the family reunification program.

Mr. Legault’s government recently announced it would seek to bring in 70,000 immigrants in 2022. But the one-time boost would only to make up for a shortfall of newcomers experienced in 2020 and this year because of the pandemic. Despite the one-shot increase, Quebec will continue to receive far fewer immigrants relative to its population than Ontario, B.C. and Alberta.

To keep pace with the rest of the country, Quebec, which accounts for 22.5 per cent of the Canadian population, would need to increase the number of immigrants it accepts to 90,000 starting this year and increase the level annually after that.

In 2019, Quebec accepted only 40,565 immigrants, or 11.9 per cent of the 341,180 permanent residents admitted to Canada that year. Its share is set to rise temporarily to 17 per cent next year, but will fall below 12 per cent again starting in 2023 as Ottawa increases the national immigration target to 421,000.

Beyond the current labour crunch, the CAQ’s immigration policy will leave the province even less well equipped to face the budgetary pressures caused by an increasingly aging population. At 19.7 per cent, the proportion of Quebeckers over the age of 65 exceeded the national average of 18 per cent in 2020. Quebec also has fewer residents under the age of 20 than the rest of Canada, while the size of its working-aged population has been shrinking.

Mr. Legault, who is up for re-election in 2022, continues to portray immigration as a threat to Quebec’s distinct culture. But his policies are damaging his province’s economic prospects and reducing its political influence within Canada. How can that be good for Quebec’s cultural survival?

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-amid-quebec-labour-crunch-legault-spurns-business-demands-for-more/

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Human rights hearing on allegations of racial profiling of migrant workers caught in mass DNA sweep begins

2021/11/25 Leave a comment

Of interest:

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario will hear Monday from migrant workers who allege they were racially targeted by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) as part of a DNA sweep in connection to a 2013 sexual assault investigation.

The 54 applicants argue that the indiscriminate manner in which the DNA sweep was conducted violated their rights under Ontario’s Human Rights Code.

The OPP swabbed 96 Black and brown migrant farm workers from mostly Caribbean countries working on at least five farms in Elgin County, in southwestern Ontario, in 2013 as officers searched for a suspect in a sexual assault.

But human rights lawyer Shane Martínez, who is representing the migrant workers pro bono, says most workers who were swabbed did not fit the physical description of the suspect except for the colour of their skin.

“Workers were West Indian, workers were black from Jamaica, workers with long dreadlocks, ones who were bald — one worker had gold teeth,” Martínez said. “They were as diverse a group as you could potentially imagine.”

“When they tried to provide explanations as to [where they were] and they provided alibis, the police completely disregarded those and wanted nothing more than to collect their DNA because of how they looked.”

The suspect, meanwhile, was described as between 5-10 and six feet tall, black, with no facial hair and a low voice that might have a Jamaican accent.

The sexual assault survivor told police her attacker was muscular and possibly in his mid-to-late 20s. She said she was confident the perpetrator was a migrant worker and believed she’d seen him near her home in rural southwestern Ontario.

‘I didn’t want to risk my livelihood’

Dwayne Henry recalls being asked to provide a DNA swab eight years ago.

Hailing from Jamaica, Henry says while he was nervous, he initially felt assured when the police approached him.

“We were scared, but knowing this was Canada, this was the first world, I thought I was doing something keeping with the law,” said Henry. “We know what police can do back in our country.”

Henry, who now lives in Stratford, Ont., said he was with his girlfriend at the time of the assault and had dreadlocks that did not match the suspect’s description. But he says that made no difference in the investigation.

Now that he’s a permanent resident, Henry says he could clearly see that both his employer and the police pressured him to comply.

“I think at that time they were taking advantage of us just because we were migrant workers,” said Henry. “We were scared that we were going to be sent back home. This is the place [where we are the] breadwinner for our family, you know?”

Henry says the investigation continues to follow him and his reputation, even back in his home country. That’s why he became part of the human rights claim.

“To this day, it still has a dent in my life.”

Samples didn’t match DNA from scene

Police would later tell an independent review into what happened in 2013 that due to the seasonal agricultural worker program, they felt they had to act fast to find the perpetrator before he left the country.

On Nov. 30, 2013, Henry Cooper, a migrant farm worker from Trinidad and Tobago was arrested after suspicions around his unwillingness to provide a DNA swab and conversations with his employer led to the OPP surveilling him in hopes of getting a discarded sample of his DNA.

He eventually pleaded guilty to sexual assault with a weapon, forcible confinement and uttering death threats and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

In 2016, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) released its report based on a complaint put forth by Justicia for Migrant Workers, a volunteer-run collective that advocates for the rights of migrant workers.

At least 11 other stakeholders made submissions to be considered during the review, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

The report found that while the investigation failed to “recognize the particular vulnerabilities of the migrant worker community targeted by the DNA canvass,” it was not motivated by racial prejudice.

It also questioned whether the “consents obtained were truly informed and voluntary.”

In his report, Gerry McNeilly, the police review director at the time, recommended the OPP adopt a policy on canvassing for DNA that could also be used by other police services.

When asked if the OPP had implemented this recommendation — and the report’s six others, which included training for officers on DNA canvassing and communication surrounding the collection and destruction of DNA — OPP spokesperson Bill Dickson said it “reviewed [the report’s] contents and continues to address the recommendations that were made in the OIPRD review.”

When pressed about what that meant, he replied as follows: “Any further comment would be inappropriate in order to preserve the integrity of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario hearing.”

Martínez says despite acknowledgement of the OPP’s shortcomings, the independent police review did not match the standards of a human rights tribunal in determining racial discrimination — which is one of the reasons the workers moved ahead with their claim.

All of the officers interviewed by the independent police review director said they had told the migrant workers that their decision to participate in the DNA swabbing was voluntary — and that the decision would be kept confidential from their employers so as not to affect their job security.

But the report found the officers failed to do that.

After learning that a few workers had refused to do the DNA test, the main employer “made the decision that none of these men would be invited back to work for our company in the future unless they consented to take [the] test,” the report found.

Case delayed for years

The application to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario was filed in 2015.

While the COVID-19 pandemic created some delay in getting to a hearing, Martínez alleges the OPP also tried to have the case quashed.

Martínez says the OPP tried to have the application dismissed because it was filed two years after the DNA swab instead of within the typical one-year deadline.

But he said a pre-tribunal hearing found that the filing delay was “sustained in good faith” and it noted that the applicants are part of a vulnerable population.

A class-action lawsuit on behalf of anyone whose DNA was taken by the OPP in relation to these types of investigations has also been certified.

The lawsuit alleges the Centre of Forensic Sciences has retained DNA profiles in a database, even though the material gathered did not match that of the suspect in the criminal investigation.

Although the 2016 independent police review states that all of the migrant workers’ samples were destroyed in 2014, a spokesperson for Justicia for Migrant Workers says the workers don’t have faith the samples and their profiles are gone — and were never made aware their DNA profiles would be entered into a database.

“These are widespread issues of privacy, of privacy infringement, of racial injustice that I think all of us in the community need to be concerned [about],” said Chris Ramsaroop. This is a systemic practice and policing that’s flawed.”

Fighting for recognition

According to Justicia for Migrant Workers, the case is the first human rights hearing of its kind in Canada to examine allegations of systemic racial profiling and discrimination by the police of migrant farm workers.

“Many of the workers wanted to just basically put this incident past them, and there were other workers who were still fearful of repatriation,” Ramsaroop said. “But the fact that we had 54 of the 96 workers take part in this I think is phenomenal. This speaks to the level of outrage that exists within this community.”

Henry says he’s fighting for recognition, compensation and justice so that other people don’t have to go through something similar.

“We are taking a stand to protect the rights of migrant workers who are coming,” Henry said. “I’m doing this not just because of us; I’m doing this for other migrant workers also.”

Source: Human rights hearing on allegations of racial profiling of migrant workers caught in mass DNA sweep begins

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism, Racism

Why the Modi government is unlikely to repeat the farm laws pullback with the citizenship law

2021/11/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

On November 19, Prime Minister Narendra Modi did something that he isn’t known for – revoke a major policy decision under public pressure.

He even topped it off with a public apology, which is a far cry from his otherwise haughty and unrepentant style of leadership. Whether it was a faux apology or a genuine one is a different matter.

Why did Modi walk back on the controversial farm bills after a year?

To put it simply, the costs of defending and maintaining the laws in the face of a year-long resistance by farmers had risen dramatically. With elections in the agrarian states of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh looming over his head, Modi couldn’t afford to appear dismissive of farmer unions, which have a strong sway in both states. And he certainly can’t afford to lose a crucial state like Uttar Pradesh – the hearth of the modern Hindutva political project.

But, the electoral imperative is a secondary, derivative factor. This isn’t the first time important state elections are taking place in Modi’s India. More importantly, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s current senior leadership isn’t quite the type to reverse major policy decisions before state polls. It has other political tricks up its sleeve to stay ahead in the game and offset any negative impact of its national-level decisions on state-level constituencies.

Meeting its match

What really made a difference this time was the extraordinarily defiant nature of the farmers’ movement, which not just successfully weathered all kinds of pressure from the top, but also handled its internal contradictions and shortcomings with much aplomb. This is a government that has mastered the art of attrition when it comes to protests. But this time, it met it’s match in the farmers who kept at it through four seasons.

From overt force to covert subterfuge, the Modi government deployed every single strategy in its playbook to diffuse the protests, but failed miserably. Even a concerted attempt by the pro-regime media to demonise the protesting Sikhs as Khalistani terrorists, anarchists and what not fell flat on the ground. Let’s be clear – we don’t get to see this very often in Modi’s India.

Thus, to only attribute Modi’s turnaround to sheer electoral realpolitik, would be to underplay the movement’s own role in creating fertile ground for a pullback. Without the grit, tact, conviction and consistency that the farmer unions showed in the face of an insolent administration, the farm laws wouldn’t have become an election issue in the first place, that too an issue big enough for Modi to do the unthinkable – retrench and apologise.

A movement with an edge

But here’s another important thing about the farmers’ movement that helped it win – it had a certain degree of social, political and economic leverage that other mass movements in Modi’s India have lacked. This is both an organic leverage, and one that the movement leaders crafted from scratch.

First, the Hindutva regime can’t target farmers in a manner that it can target religious minorities like Muslims. Even for a government as malevolent and divisive as this one, a strategy of ignoring and vilifying the large agrarian voter base can be a huge political gamble. It can backfire not just at the polling booths, but also at a deeper social level within the ambit of the Hindutva project.

Second, the farmers’ movement cut across specific identities, which allowed the union leaders to forge a rare cross-sectional coalition and stand up for each other. While Sikhs, a religious minority that is routinely profiled with various derogatory political markers, remained a dominant force within the movement and were repeatedly demonised by pro-government elements, the North Indian agrarian class straddles many sub-regional and religious identities, which reflected very well in the movement.

For instance, Hindu Jats from the sugarcane belt in western Uttar Pradesh played a central role in the second phase of the movement. The leadership of Rakesh Tikait, who eventually became one of the most prominent faces of the movement, was instrumental in this. Even some Muslim farmers from the sub-region rallied behind him, despite his murky past as a prime agent of the anti-Muslim Muzaffarnagar riots in 2013.

Show of defiance

One could even argue that it was Tikait’s tactful show of defiance and emotions at Ghazipur in late January that took the spotlight away from the “Khalistani infiltration” narrative that reared its head after the dramatic farmers’ march into the Red Fort on Republic Day. It might have been an unintended outcome of his actions, but was effective nonetheless.

This multiplicity of identities, sub-regional leaderships and the solidarity between them erected a protective fence around the movement. More significantly, despite the many sub-regional identities at play, the farmers, as a class of protestors, had become a singular political force. It was clear that eventually, the Modi government ran out of ways to deal with such a kaleidoscopic body of protestors with a common set of demands. It was no longer viable to launch sectarian attacks at one group of protestors without insinuating the others. Add to this the constant political risk of losing the agrarian constituencies for good.

This is where we come to the movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act – how it is very different from the farmers’ movement and why Modi is highly unlikely to kneel before it.

No pullback

The most obvious difference between the farmers protest and the movement against the citizenship initiatives is that unlike farmers, Muslims are not a core voter base for the BJP. Modi will not lose anything by plainly ignoring them. In fact, he stands to gain additional political points by crushing a movement that is primarily led by Muslims – the number one cultural enemy of Hindutva.

So, his government can go on dismissing them for years and still win one election after another. Occasionally, he can get a few of them thrown behind bars for “terrorism” or sedition and win a few extra votes in the next poll. While the government has filed hundreds of cases against protesting farmers too, the political costs of doing so are far lower in the case of Muslims.

Next, the farmers’ movement is based on a narrative that is primarily economic in its persuasion. Political concerns about the ruling party’s attacks on federalism and state excesses do routinely feature in union speeches and pamphlets, but the collective anxiety against privatisation of the agrarian market and the demand for a guaranteed Minimum Support Price continue to take centrestage in the movement repertoire.

This is compelling for all social groups invested in the agricultural sector in one way or the other. Even for the non-farming urban and semi-urban middle classes from the majority community, agrarian concerns matter as daily consumers of farm products. If not anything, farmer strikes affect them directly. That’s also why it eventually became a poll issue that the government had to take seriously.

This isn’t true in the case of the movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which is primarily centred around a single minority religious identity. The pool of stakeholders is much narrower here. While many conscientious Hindus participated in the movement, their numbers remained low and their commitment inconsistent. The social elite, including the Hindu middle classes in urban/semi-urban settings, remained apathetic – even hostile – to the movement.

The reality here is truly bleak: only Muslims stand to lose the most from the dangerous Citizenship Amendment Act-National Register of Citizens combine while the others couldn’t care less. In fact, most of the others see the movement as, at best, an irritant and at worst, a destructive force.

Further, by strategically decoupling the proposed all-India National Register of Citizens from the Citizenship Amendment Act (despite Home Minister Amit Shah unambiguously linking them both in the beginning), the government was able to project the sectarian citizenship law as a benign amendment that doesn’t really affect Indian Muslims in any way. This diffused overall participation. No such tactical decoupling was possible in the case of the three farm laws.

In all, the movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act lacked a watertight social coalition that could cut across identity and class lines, of the kinds seen in the farmers’ movement. It had no safety net that could absorb the state’s repressive and divisive offensives. This made it fairly easy for the Modi government to use the law enforcement machinery, pliant media and belligerent proxies to go after the protestors. The pandemic only came as a force multiplier.

Finally, if Modi revokes the Citizenship Amendment Act after repealing the farm laws, it would be nothing short of political suicide for the BJP. While the core party machinery is busy lauding him for the farm laws pullback, large sections of the wider Hindutva ecosystem are incensed. They see it as a betrayal, a meek surrender that is reminiscent of the seemingly weak Congress regimes. This is not the valiant prime minister they have grown to love.

Defying logic

There’s nothing to suggest that the Modi government isn’t aware of this. Modi is a leader who is highly conscious of what his people think about him. For him, his image is paramount. After all, that is literally the only pillar on which he has erected his shining political career. While he possibly has a plan to manage the publicity fallout (we don’t quite know what it is yet), bad PR from his own cheerleaders can very quickly spiral into a situation that even he could lose control over.

In such a scenario, revoking the Citizenship Amendment Act would defy all logic. It would only add to the badmouthing and alienate both hardliners and moderates. A strategy of attrition based on brute force, sectarian vilification and state intimidation has worked well for Modi with the protestors against the Citizenship Amendment Act so far. There’s no reason for him to abandon that playbook.

As far as the electoral imperative is concerned, several state polls have happened since the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act began, but BJP never considered repealing the divisive amendment. In fact, it has used the legislation to energise the Hindu voter base and strengthen their numbers. For instance, in Assam, defying popular belief, the BJP secured a landslide win this year despite months of fierce protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

In short, the Citizenship Amendment Act has been a winning formula for the BJP from the beginning, unlike the farm laws. So the Modi government has no reason to junk it now.

This might be a cynical reading of the future, but it is crucial to understand the distinctions between the two movements precisely so that lessons can be learnt and strategies replicated. It is worth noting that the movement against the citizenship initiatives did manage to secure a critical concession – temporary rollback of the proposed all-India National Register of Citizens, which Shah had promised in the Parliament. Since the protests, he hasn’t mentioned it again. This too was no less than a victory, even if partial.

So, for the movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act , the possibility of a total triumph remains. But for now, it remains hidden behind a thick fog of cynical politics, anti-Muslim majoritarianism and authoritarian arrogance.

Angshuman Choudhury is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, Delhi, and a former visiting fellow to the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin.

Source: Why the Modi government is unlikely to repeat the farm laws pullback with the citizenship law

Filed under Citizenship, Citizenship Act Tagged with ,

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