Portugal Moves to Enforce Tougher Citizenship Laws with Bold Ten-Year Residency Requirement Transforming the Future of Immigration and Expat Life

2025/06/27 Leave a comment

Of note, tightening up immigration and citizenship by investment in effect among other changes:

Portugal is implementing a sweeping overhaul of its immigration and citizenship policies, introducing a powerful new requirement that doubles the legal residency period from five to ten years for most foreign nationals seeking citizenship. This bold move is designed to tighten eligibility criteria, regulate long-term migration, and reinforce integration efforts across the country. The new legislation is set to significantly impact expats, especially those from non-Portuguese-speaking nations, by reshaping the timeline and complexity of gaining Portuguese citizenship and long-term residency rights.

Portugal is set to implement significant changes to its immigration and citizenship framework, including a major shift in the minimum residency period required for naturalisation. Under the proposed revisions, most foreign nationals will need to reside in the country for a full decade before becoming eligible to apply for citizenship—twice the current requirement.

The decision marks a pivotal change in Portugal’s approach to immigration and could have far-reaching implications for expatriates, especially those from non-Portuguese-speaking nations.

Extended Path to Citizenship for Foreign Nationals

Currently, many foreigners can apply for Portuguese citizenship after five years of legal residency. However, the proposed legal amendments will extend this to ten years for the majority of applicants. Citizens from Lusophone countries such as Brazil will still benefit from relatively shorter pathways but will now be required to reside in Portugal for at least seven years to qualify for citizenship.

This move will affect thousands of expatriates hoping to make Portugal their permanent home, including a large number of British citizens who moved to Portugal following the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union. These changes are expected to make the journey to EU citizenship more complex and time-consuming.

New Restrictions on Family Reunification

In addition to the extended residency requirement, the proposed changes will introduce more limitations on family reunification rights. Immigrants will need to have lived legally in Portugal for a minimum of two years before they can bring family members into the country. Even then, the eligible relatives must be underage.

This new regulation is aimed at regulating migration flows and ensuring a more structured integration process, according to Portuguese officials. However, it is likely to impact families planning to settle together in the country, making early reunification more difficult for newcomers.

Rising Foreign Population and Slower Naturalisation

Portugal’s foreign population continues to grow steadily. According to the country’s Agency for Migration and Asylum (AIMA), Portugal now hosts over 1.5 million legal foreign residents out of a total population of approximately 10.5 million.

However, naturalisation rates have shown a recent decline. Data compiled by national statistics platform Pordata reveals that 141,300 individuals were naturalised in 2023 — a decline of twenty percent compared to the previous year. This downward trend could continue under the new rules, as longer residency requirements may deter or delay applications for citizenship.

Visa Options Remain, but With Limitations

On the other hand, residency visas are issued for individuals intending to live in Portugal longer-term. Valid for four months, they permit two entries and serve as a gateway to obtaining a residency permit from AIMA within that timeframe. Failure to secure a residency permit during this window may result in legal complications or the need to reapply.

Another key offering is the job seeker visa, designed for individuals actively seeking employment within Portugal. This visa allows entry and temporary stay for job search purposes and permits the holder to undertake paid employment while the visa is valid or until a residence permit is granted. However, this visa does not authorize travel to other Schengen countries during the search period, restricting mobility until formal residency is secured.

Portugal is enforcing a major immigration reform by doubling the residency requirement for citizenship to ten years, aiming to strengthen integration policies and reshape expat settlement patterns. This bold shift will significantly impact global migrants seeking EU citizenship through Portugal.

Implications for Foreigners Planning to Settle in Portugal

The proposed reforms signal a tightening of immigration policies, aligning with growing debates across Europe over integration and border management. For prospective immigrants, particularly those aiming to obtain EU citizenship via Portugal, these developments suggest a longer and potentially more complex process.

While Portugal remains one of the most attractive European destinations for lifestyle migration, remote work, and retirement, the evolving legal landscape may influence the decisions of those considering a permanent move. Experts advise current residents and future applicants to stay informed about upcoming legislative changes and consult immigration specialists for guidance on how these new timelines and rules may affect their plans.

Source: Portugal Moves to Enforce Tougher Citizenship Laws with Bold Ten-Year Residency Requirement Transforming the Future of Immigration and Expat Life

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‘We have to cap population growth’: Ten quotes from Pierre Poilievre’s EXCLUSIVE Hub interview 

2025/06/26 Leave a comment

As close as we are likely to get in terms of numbers and levels, although he and immigration critic Rempel-Garner will have to be more precise when the government levels plan comes out in November:

“We definitely have to cap population growth. I say population growth because in the immigration–emigration formula, there are two parts to it. There’s the number of people coming in and the number going out.

Natural population growth in Canada is basically zero, in fact, it was negative last quarter. When I say population growth, I’m really talking about immigration minus emigration. We have a lot of people who are supposed to be leaving in the next year or so. They are international students and temporary foreign workers on temporary visas that are going to run out. So we’re going to need more people to leave than to come for the next several years, and that means having negative population growth in that time period.”

Source: ‘We have to cap population growth’: Ten quotes from Pierre Poilievre’s EXCLUSIVE Hub interview

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CBSA investigates whether suspected senior Iranian officials were allowed entry into Canada

2025/06/26 Leave a comment

Screening is always a challenge but good that efforts being made:

Canadian border authorities say they are investigating or taking enforcement action in 66 cases involving suspected senior Iranian officials who may have been allowed into Canada, despite a law that bars them from entering the country or remaining in it. 

Of the 66, the Canada Border Services Agency has so far identified 20 people as inadmissible because they are believed to be senior Iranian officials, according to figures the agency provided to The Globe and Mail. 

The border agency refers such cases to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, which holds hearings to decide whether someone should be allowed in the country.

One person has so far been removed from Canada for their association with the Iranian government. Two others have been deemed inadmissible and were issued deportation orders. An additional two people were deemed admissible, though the border agency is appealing those decisions. The figures provided to The Globe are current up to June 6. 

“Our strong response to suspected senior officials in the Iranian regime remains in place and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) continues to take action to stop them from seeking or finding safe haven in Canada,” agency spokesperson Rebecca Purdy said in a statement. 

Canada’s record on preventing senior Iranian government officials from entering the country is under increased scrutiny amid the war that broke out between Israel and Iran on June 12. Human-rights activists and lawyers are concerned that Iranian officials, including members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have already managed to get into Canada and that more will attempt to do so…

Source: CBSA investigates whether suspected senior Iranian officials were allowed entry into Canada

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Gessen: Antisemitism Isn’t What People Think It Is

2025/06/25 1 Comment

Good piece on the risks of “conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism and anti-Zionism with antisemitism:”

What makes these conflations powerful and long lasting is fear. I heard an extraordinary description of how this fear operates in a podcast interview with the Columbia University professor Shai Davidai. If you are familiar with his name, it’s probably because he has been a lightning rod, a hero to those who believe that American universities have become hotbeds of antisemitism. Columbia, for its part, suspended his campus access, saying he had harassed and intimidated other university employees.

Before any of this happened, Davidai identified as left wing, an opponent of the Israeli occupation and a critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A couple of days after Oct. 7, someone showed him an open letter issued by the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. It was the kind of strident, tone-deaf letter that student organizations were putting out at the time. It talked about the inevitability of armed resistance as a response to systemic oppression. It did not talk about Jews.

And then Davidai found himself on campus, looking at several hundred students wearing kaffiyeh and, at least as he understood it, celebrating the Hamas attack. A colleague leaned over to him, he said, “and says, ‘This is the antisemitism that our parents and grandparents warned us about, and we didn’t listen.’ And the moment he said that, everything changed for me.” Davidai started speaking out on social media and attracted a great deal of attention.

Davidai described his experience as an epiphany. For many people living in Israel — a nation founded by Jews for Jews — and many American Jews as well, antisemitism is an abstraction, the stuff of stories. (I have to give credit for this observation to my daughter, who moved from a very antisemitic society to New York City at the age of 12.) These stories come from great tragedy, especially for Jews of European origin, many of whom represent the lucky-survivor branches of their families. Seeing something you have only read about suddenly, at least seemingly, come to life is a kind of awakening — the kind that a person in grief and trauma is perhaps particularly open to.

Two recent brutal attacks in the United States have sent more fear through Jewish communities here and elsewhere: the shooting of two Israeli Embassy staff members outside of the Capital Jewish Museum, in Washington, D.C., on May 21 and the firebombing of a rally in support of Israeli hostages 11 days later, in Boulder, Colo. Both attacks have been widely denounced as antisemitic.

That’s no surprise — both were visible and deliberate attacks on public events with a high concentration of Jews. But that isn’t necessarily the end of the story. Daniel May, the publisher of the magazine Jewish Currents (I serve on its board), has argued in a powerful article that neither attacker made any obviously antisemitic statements — unless one considers “Free Palestine” an antisemitic slogan. The D.C. shooter’s 900-word purported manifesto didn’t contain the word “Jew” or even “Zionist.” Of course, someone could still act out of hatred even if he doesn’t shout it in a manifesto, but the absence in that document of any explicit mention does open the possibility that he had a different motive.

Neither of these events was exclusive to Jews, as a synagogue service might be. Both events were inextricable from the war in Gaza. And though the violence in Boulder was wide ranging, the shooting in Washington seems to have been very specifically targeted — at two representatives of the Israeli government.

None of this makes the attacks any less horrific. And none of it should offer any comfort to the victims or their families. The terrible human toll is the same no matter what the attackers’ motivation. But if we are looking to draw larger lessons from this brutality, it’s worth considering that violence that looks antisemitic may — even when it very effectively serves to scare a great many Jews — be something else.

What these attacks can be understood as is, undoubtedly, acts of terrorism. There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism, but scholars agree on some basics: It’s violence committed for political reasons, against noncombatants, with the goal of sowing fear. It’s notable that “terrorism,” a term that in this country has been used and misused to crack down on civil liberties, especially those of brown and Muslim immigrants, has been joined and even supplanted by the term “antisemitism,” wielded in similar ways, for the same purposes.

Terrorists aim to provoke a reaction. A violent and disproportionate response, because it amplifies their message that whatever they have targeted is absolute evil. They got that response in Israel’s devastation of Gaza following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

Terrified people tend to support disproportionate violence. Terrified people make perfect constituencies for politicians like Netanyahu because they can be convinced that the unrelenting massacre and starvation of Gazans is necessary to keep Israel safe, and for President Trump, because they may not question the justification for pre-emptively bombing a sovereign country.

My thoughts keep returning to that conversation with the historian of Stalinism. She studied an era of political terrorism carried out on the premise — crazy yet widely accepted — that the U.S.S.R. was full of people who wanted to kill their leader. Today, we may live in an even more cynical era, when political leaders, instead of acting on their own fears of violence, instrumentalize other people’s fear.

The conflations that underlie most political conversations about antisemitism make it seem as if everyone wants to kill Jews — that antisemitism is not just common but omnipresent. If you believe that the whole world wants you dead, then you are much less likely to stand up for human rights or civil liberties, other people’s or your own.

A casualty of this cynical era is our understanding of the actual scale of antisemitism, defined as animus against Jews as Jews. There are many reasons to think that antisemitic attitudes and attacks are on the rise, but the keepers of statistics often thwart the effort to get hard information, because they insist on conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism and anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

New York City is home to the largest number of Jews outside of Israel. But for all the noise mayoral candidates and their supporters have made about antisemitism, Mamdani is the only one I have heard so movingly acknowledge the emotional toll that the real and imagined threats of antisemitism have been taking on Jewish New Yorkers. I wonder how many people can hear him through all the din.

Source: Antisemitism Isn’t What People Think It Is

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Le plurilinguisme des immigrants est-il nécessairement une menace pour le français?

2025/06/24 Leave a comment

Good analysis pour la Fête Nationale du Québec:

Des répondants qui cochent plusieurs cases à « langue maternelle ». Des jeunes scolarisés dans une langue, mais qui en utilisent une autre à la maison et une autre encore devant leur écran. Des conversations entre amis ou à la table familiale dans deux langues. Un appel du travail dans une troisième. En parallèle à l’évolution des usages du français, une équipe de chercheurs tente de sortir le plurilinguisme de l’angle mort des dynamiques linguistiques.



« On a tendance à avoir une vision un peu binaire : on est soit francophone, soit anglophone, dans cette idée de deux langues officielles avec deux peuples fondateurs, mais on constate déjà que de plus en plus de gens déclarent plus d’une langue maternelle », décrit le professeur en sociologie à l’Université Laval Richard Marcoux.



L’immigration internationale est en effet le facteur dominant — et même exclusif depuis l’an dernier — de la croissance de la population. Il importe donc de mieux saisir la complexité du bagage des immigrants, estime ce cotitulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Québec sur la situation démolinguistique et les politiques linguistiques.



Parmi les 10 premiers pays d’origine des immigrants permanents au Québec l’an dernier, on retrouve le Cameroun, la Tunisie, l’Algérie, le Maroc, Haïti, la Côte d’Ivoire et le Liban. Ce sont des pays où certains usages du français existent, sans que les immigrants qui en viennent n’entrent dans la case de plus en plus étroite des francophones de langue maternelle.



Pour obtenir un portrait plus juste de l’état des choses, il faut dépasser les critères plus traditionnels comme la langue maternelle ou la langue parlée à la maison : « Ça ne suffit plus et c’est moins représentatif de l’immigration actuelle », juge celui qui préside aussi le Comité consultatif sur la statistique linguistique de Statistique Canada.



Ce « plurilinguisme dès la naissance » est encore mal saisi par les indicateurs les plus couramment cités. C’est différent, regarder la première langue parlée à la maison et considérer toutes celles qui sont parlées entre les murs privés, mettaient par exemple de l’avant M. Marcoux et ses collègues sociologues Jean-Pierre Corbeil et Victor Piché, dans une note de recherche de 2023.


« Ce qu’on constate, c’est que ces immigrants arrivent en disant : “Moi, ma langue maternelle, c’est l’arabe ET le français. J’ai été socialisé dans les deux langues, avec un univers qui se passait parfois dans l’une, parfois dans l’autre” », explique M. Marcoux plus en détail. « C’est différent de dire : “J’ai été élevé à Rabat, à Alger ou à Cotonou” », ajoute le professeur qui revient tout juste de Dakar, au Sénégal.

Cohabitation

Le plurilinguisme qu’il décrit colle à l’expérience de Hocine Taleb. Arrivé d’Algérie à 18 ans, il occupe maintenant, à l’aube de la trentaine, un emploi en informatique où il utilise majoritairement le français et, à l’occasion, l’anglais. Durant son enfance, il a été scolarisé en arabe à l’école publique. Il est exposé au français partout dans l’espace public, surtout à la télévision, et il parle kabyle avec sa famille et ses amis.

Alors quelle case coche-t-il ? « Techniquement, ma langue maternelle est le kabyle, mais aujourd’hui, je pense davantage en français que dans les autres langues », explique-t-il. Le kabyle reste la langue du dimanche chez ses parents, et celle qui décrit le mieux les plats délicieux préparés par sa mère.

Même s’il est au Québec depuis plus d’une décennie, on lui trouve encore le plus souvent un accent « de Français de France », un pays où il n’a pas vécu. Sa copine a des origines à la fois chinoise et québécoise ; elle a grandi d’abord en anglais puis en français, ce qui fait qu’ensemble, ils utilisent encore un mélange des deux.

C’est l’arabe finalement, « une langue imposée par l’école », qui est le moins présent dans ses journées, au point où il ne le parle pratiquement plus.

Un élan vers le français

Preuve s’il en est que l’on « naît de moins en moins francophone, on le devient », comme a déjà dit M. Marcoux lors d’une entrevue précédente. Il travaille notamment avec le professeur Koia Jean Martial Kouame, basé en Côte d’Ivoire, qui dit que le français est maintenant une langue africaine, un butin de guerre que les gens se sont réappropriés, tant au nord, à l’ouest qu’au centre de ce continent monumental.

Ensemble, ils tentent de préciser la place de la langue française dans une trentaine de métropoles différentes, toutes plurilingues. « Le français est la langue de communication, d’échange à Abidjan, mais pas à Bamako. À Dakar, on voit que la population se wolofise [parle de plus en plus la langue locale wolof], en même temps qu’elle se francise », note M. Marcoux.

Le Rwanda, parfois décrit comme ayant « basculé » du côté anglophone, n’a en fait jamais été francophone, note-t-il aussi, pour illustrer les nuances possibles. Les élites favorisent en effet l’anglais, mais les journaux, les banques et une partie de l’administration fonctionne beaucoup plus en kinyarwanda : « Depuis qu’on mesure, la proportion de francophones n’a jamais dépassé 8 % ! », note le professeur québécois.

C’est donc en quelque sorte deux élans inverses qu’il documente : du plurilinguisme vers le français en Afrique subsaharienne et au Maghreb, et du français vers plusieurs langues au Québec. Le point d’arrivée ? Une affirmation plurielle d’une langue décomplexée, un polycentrisme qui déplace le centre de gravité de la norme parisienne.

Pas une menace

À l’inverse de ce que les détracteurs de M. Marcoux tentent de lui coller comme étiquette, le chercheur affirme : « On part du consensus que le français est fragile et il a besoin d’une attention particulière. Mais on ne voit pas le plurilinguisme comme une menace à la langue. On dit seulement qu’il faut prendre la réalité en compte, et cette réalité est le plurilinguisme. »

Il n’est donc pas question, pour lui, de reculer sur les politiques déjà en place, surtout sur l’obligation d’envoyer ses enfants à l’école en français. Il veut plutôt qu’on cesse de voir la langue plurielle comme un facteur d’anglicisation ou de déclin du français. « On veut, nous aussi, que nos institutions continuent à fonctionner en français, mais on ne s’inquiète pas quand les gens échangent entre eux dans des conversations privées en arabe ou en espagnol. Ce n’est pas ça la menace à mes yeux », conclut l’expert.

Source: Le plurilinguisme des immigrants est-il nécessairement une menace pour le français?

Respondents who check several boxes in “mother tongue”. Young people educated in one language, but who use another at home and another in front of their screen. Conversations between friends or at the family table in two languages. A call from work in a third. In parallel with the evolution of French uses, a team of researchers is trying to get plurilingualism out of the blind spot of linguistic dynamics.

“We tend to have a somewhat binary vision: we are either French-speaking or English-speaking, in this idea of two official languages with two founding peoples, but we already see that more and more people declare more than one mother tongue,” describes the professor of sociology at Laval University Richard Marcoux.

International immigration is indeed the dominant – and even exclusive factor since last year – of population growth. It is therefore important to better grasp the complexity of immigrants’ baggage, says this co-holder of the Quebec Research Chair on the demolinguistic situation and language policies.

Among the top 10 countries of origin of permanent immigrants in Quebec last year, we find Cameroon, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Haiti, Ivory Coast and Lebanon. These are countries where certain uses of French exist, without immigrants who come from them entering the increasingly narrow box of French-speaking mother tongues.

To get a fairer picture of the state of affairs, it is necessary to go beyond more traditional criteria such as the mother tongue or the language spoken at home: “It is no longer enough and it is less representative of current immigration,” says the one who also chairs the Statistical Canada Linguistic Statistics Advisory Committee.

This “multilingualism from birth” is still poorly grasped by the most commonly cited indicators. It’s different, looking at the first language spoken at home and considering all those that are spoken between private walls, put for example M. Marcoux and his fellow sociologists Jean-Pierre Corbeil and Victor Piché, in a 2023 research note.

“What we see is that these immigrants arrive saying: “Me, my mother tongue, is Arabic AND French. I was socialized in both languages, with a universe that sometimes happened in one, sometimes in the other,” explains Mr. Marcoux in more detail. “It’s different to say: “I was raised in Rabat, Algiers or Cotonou,” adds the teacher who has just returned from Dakar, Senegal.

Living with somebody

The plurilingualism he describes is in line with Hocine Taleb’s experience. During his childhood, he was educated in Arabic in public school. He is exposed to French everywhere in the public space, especially on television, and he speaks Kabyle with his family and friends.

So which box does it tick? “Technically, my mother tongue is Kabyle, but today, I think more in French than in other languages,” he explains. Kabyle remains the Sunday language of his parents, and the one that best describes the delicious dishes prepared by his mother.

Even though he has been in Quebec for more than a decade, he is still most often found with a “French” accent, a country where he has not lived. His girlfriend has both Chinese and Quebec origins; she grew up first in English and then in French, which means that together, they still use a mixture of the two.

It is finally Arabic, “a language imposed by the school”, which is the least present in his days, to the point where he hardly speaks it anymore.

A boost towards French

Proof if it is that we are “born less and less French-speaking, we become one”, as Mr. He works in particular with Professor Koia Jean Martial Kouame, based in Côte d’Ivoire, who says that French is now an African language, a war booty that people have reappropriated, both in the north, west and center of this monumental continent.

Together, they try to specify the place of the French language in about thirty different metropolises, all multilingual. “French is the language of communication, of exchange in Abidjan, but not in Bamako. In Dakar, we see that the population is Wolofing [speaking the local Wolof language more and more], at the same time as it is Frenchizing, “notes Mr. Marcoux

Rwanda, sometimes described as having “swung” to the English-speaking side, has in fact never been French-speaking, he also notes, to illustrate the possible nuances. The elites indeed favor English, but newspapers, banks and part of the administration work much more in kinyarwanda: “Since we measure, the proportion of French speakers has never exceeded 8%! “, notes the Quebec teacher.

It is therefore in a way two inverse impulses that it documents: from multilingualism to French in sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb, and from French to several languages in Quebec. The point of arrival? A plural affirmation of an uninhibited language, a polycentrism that displaces the center of gravity of the Parisian norm.

Not a threat

Contrary to what Mr. Marcoux’s critics try to label him, the researcher says: “We start from the consensus that French is fragile and needs special attention. But we do not see multilingualism as a threat to language. We only say that we must take reality into account, and this reality is multilingualism. ”

There is therefore no question, for him, of going back on the policies already in place, especially on the obligation to send his children to school in French. Rather, he wants us to stop seeing the plural language as a factor of Anglicization or decline of French. “We also want our institutions to continue to function in French, but we don’t worry when people exchange with each other in private conversations in Arabic or Spanish. That’s not the threat in my eyes, “concludes the expert.

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Racial bias exists in five-star ratings for gig workers, study shows. Thumbs up/thumbs down scale would fix that

2025/06/23 Leave a comment

Small but significant difference and impact:

Most of us do it, sometimes daily. After ordering a ride, getting a meal delivered or hiring someone for home repairs through an app, we’re asked to rate the service – often on a five-star scale.

Ratings are intended to be a fair way to reward good work and ensure those who provide exceptional service get more business.

“We want to ensure that the [rating] system allows shoppers’ effort to shine,” John Adams, vice-president of product at Instacart, states on the delivery company’s website. 

But a study published recently in the science journal Nature suggests otherwise. It found these seemingly neutral five-star systems harbour subtle but measurable racial bias that disappears when a “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” rating system is used.

Using data from an unnamed home-services app operating in Canada and the United States that had been using a five-star scale, researchers found a statistically significant difference between ratings given to white and non-white workers. After analyzing tens of thousands of reviews, the study showed white workers received an average rating of 4.79 stars, while non-white workers averaged 4.72.

That 0.07-point gap may seem trivial, but co-author Katherine DeCelles, a professor of organizational behaviour at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, says it has real financial consequences. Because many apps rely on customer ratings to determine which workers are recommended most often, non-white workers were found to earn 91 cents for every dollar their white counterparts made for the same work.

The researchers attribute part of the disparity to subtle and often unconscious bias. For instance, a customer giving a racial minority worker who performs well four stars, instead of five, “does not challenge the customer’s self-image as non-prejudiced, since four stars can still be seen as a positive rating,” according to the report….

Source: Racial bias exists in five-star ratings for gig workers, study shows. Thumbs up/thumbs down scale would fix that

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Dosanjh: Canada has put up with Khalistani terrorists for long enough

2025/06/23 Leave a comment

Of note from former British Columbia premier and Liberal minister:

….After decades of frustration over the West’s indifference to the Khalistani menace, India finally sees signs of progress, as the Trump administration appears to be acting on the threat in the United States. Following U.S. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s meetings with Indian officials in New Delhi in March, the FBI arrested a Khalistani terrorist with suspected links to the ISI.

While inviting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 Summit in Alberta was a welcome move to mend Canada-India relations, the Carney government can ill-afford to continue ignoring the Khalistani threat.

As the past four decades have shown, permitting extremist groups with criminal tendencies to operate unbridled in Canada has severely undermined the country’s national security and public safety interests.

The Khalistan movement is not a legitimate political cause. It is an extremist, hate-fest-cum-transnational-criminal-entity that was responsible for Canada’s deadliest terror attack and has made our streets less safe. There is nothing Canadian about a movement that radicalizes children to hate, and threatens and glorifies the assassination of foreign leaders.

As former prime minister Stephen Harper rightly counselled, it’s time for Canada’s political class to “sever” ties with Khalistani separatists and treat them with the contempt that murderous terrorists and criminals deserve.

Source: Opinion: Canada has put up with Khalistani terrorists for long enough

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization, Religion Tagged with ,

Entre réussite et intégration, un Québec fou de tous ses enfants

2025/06/23 Leave a comment

Interesting read by a former teacher:

…Mon premier contrat dans mon champ — l’histoire et la géographie — était dans une grande école secondaire du quartier défavorisé Côte-des-Neiges. J’ai partagé certaines appréhensions concernant le secteur avec des collègues, et ils m’ont tous répondu une variation de la formule suivante : Côte-des-Neiges, c’est un secret bien gardé.

Les défis linguistiques y sont importants, mais la population scolaire y est réceptive, les jeunes souvent polis et travaillants. C’était il y a dix ans. J’avais plus de deux cents élèves et une seule qui n’était pas issue de l’immigration.

Cette école n’avait rien d’un « ghetto » : on y retrouvait plus de soixante nationalités représentées. Dans les corridors, on entendait l’anglais, l’espagnol, l’arabe ou le tagalog. La valorisation du français était au cœur du projet éducatif.

Les élèves s’exprimaient aussi entre eux dans la langue de Molière, la seule qu’ils avaient tous en commun. Un français certes teinté d’accents de banlieues françaises ou de franglais. Une langue qui ne les avait pas préparés à comprendre L’erreur boréale, que j’ai dû traduire, mimer et rembobiner lors du chapitre sur le territoire forestier.

L’équipe d’accueil et de francisation comptait sur des enseignants intimement qualifiés : pour plusieurs, le français avait aussi été une langue étrangère. Grâce à leur formation et leur expérience, ces enseignants savaient que l’apprentissage d’une langue s’effectue en complémentarité et non en concurrence avec les autres langues connues.

Plusieurs recherches montrent que des pédagogies plurilingues, mobilisant les autres langues des élèves, soutiennent efficacement l’apprentissage du français. En plus de leurs effets positifs sur le plan cognitif, ces pratiques renforcent le lien maître-élève.

Or, comme l’ont souligné plusieurs chercheuses en commission parlementaire, certains articles du projet de loi 94 visant notamment à renforcer la laïcité risquent de compromettre ces interactions dans la langue maternelle de l’élève.

Les pratiques d’accueil

La francisation des élèves ne se limite pas aux classes d’accueil. Il existe les services intensifs d’accueil et de soutien à l’apprentissage du français (SASAF), qui incluent un soutien quotidien en classe ordinaire et les classes d’accueil.

Les services de soutien linguistique d’appoint en francisation (SLAF) s’adressent quant à eux aux élèves intégrés en classe ordinaire dont l’acquisition du français est bien amorcée.

Les critères de classement et les choix de services varient d’un centre de services scolaire à l’autre. Notons que le MEQ n’a fixé aucun nombre minimal d’heures hebdomadaires de SLAF à offrir. L’accès aux services professionnels, comme l’orthopédagogie ou la psychoéducation, peut aussi être limité lorsqu’une direction considère que la classe d’accueil constitue le service de soutien.

Certaines directions imposent aux enseignants d’attendre que l’élève soit francisé avant de soumettre une demande de services complémentaires. Certaines disent vouloir éviter la suridentification. N’en demeure qu’avec la hausse du nombre d’élèves ayant un parcours scolaire interrompu, des retards importants ou des parcours migratoires difficiles, ce retard d’accès pèse lourd à la fois sur les élèves et sur le personnel.

Selon le MEQ, alors qu’il y a deux fois plus d’élèves en classe d’accueil qu’il y a dix ans, on en compte trois fois plus en classe ordinaire bénéficiant d’un soutien d’appoint sans qu’aucune norme minimale ne soit établie à cet effet. Les critères de classement demeurent souvent opaques ; le service d’appoint est-il réellement suffisant pour ces élèves ? Plus d’uniformité et de transparence sont nécessaires.

Qui sont les élèves issus de l’immigration ?

À la parution, en 2015, de l’ouvrage de Marie Mc Andrew et du groupe de recherche Immigration, équité et scolarisation (GRIES), La réussite éducative des élèves issus de l’immigration, ceux-ci représentaient 26 % de la population scolaire. Dix ans plus tard, ce chiffre est passé à 36 %.

Tous n’ont pas besoin de services de francisation. C’est notamment le cas de plusieurs élèves dits de deuxième génération, les plus nombreux (22 % de ces 36 %), dont le recours aux SASAF est resté stable depuis dix ans, voire a légèrement diminué. Un élève de deuxième génération est un élève né ici dont au moins un parent est né à l’extérieur du Québec. Fait marquant, le nombre d’élèves immigrants dont la langue maternelle est le français est en hausse — ils composent près de la moitié du groupe en 2025 (43 % contre 37 % en 2015). Les groupes de langue arabe, anglaise ou espagnole sont, eux, restés stables.

Les élèves issus de l’immigration fréquentent davantage l’école privée au secondaire que les non-immigrants (24,5 % contre 20,5 %), une donnée influencée par la forte présence des élèves de deuxième génération dans le réseau privé. Toutefois, le rôle du privé dans l’accueil et la francisation des élèves de première génération tend à diminuer.

Citoyenneté québécoise

Comment évalue-t-on l’intégration d’une personne à sa société d’accueil ? Lorsque cette question est soulevée, les critères objectifs sont parfois maigres. Pour les élèves québécois, deux indicateurs pourraient toutefois nous servir de repères : la réussite scolaire et le choix de la langue d’enseignement au postsecondaire.

Selon l’Observatoire des inégalités, en 2016, le taux de diplomation des élèves de deuxième génération était de 88 %, alors qu’il était de 83 % pour les élèves non issus de l’immigration. Quant aux élèves de première génération ayant immigré dès le primaire, leur taux de réussite est passé de 75 % à 84 % entre 2008 et 2016.

Bien que les défis soient nombreux, plusieurs facteurs propres à la population immigrante expliqueraient cette réussite, dont l’approche scolaire parentale. En 2015, le GRIES notait que le caractère sélectif des politiques d’immigration québécoises, visant un objectif d’établissement permanent, contribuait à la stabilité des familles, à la légitimité de la présence des immigrants, ce qui favorisait la réussite.

Après leur passage en système scolaire francophone, comme le veut la loi 101, 50 % des inscrits allophones au collégial choisissaient les études en français en 2007. Cela passait à 66 % en 2021, selon l’OQLF. Sur cette même période, le choix des jeunes francophones pour le collégial en français est lui passé de 95 % à 93 %. Considérant ce facteur, l’intégration des jeunes allophones à la société québécoise tend à s’améliorer.

Afin d’accentuer l’adhésion à la culture francophone, dans un rapport bien documenté sur les dynamiques linguistiques du monde scolaire, le commissaire à la langue française, Benoît Dubreuil, proposait notamment des mesures comme le développement de programmes de jumelages entre écoles de différentes régions du Québec, approche souvent mise de côté au profit d’expériences internationales.

Les élèves issus de l’immigration créent-ils « une pression énorme sur nos écoles » ? Les politiques d’immigration, nommément celles d’immigration temporaire, ont accentué leur nombre, surtout depuis 2022.

Reste que leur présence à la hausse s’inscrit de façon prévisible depuis plusieurs années, que ces élèves sont aussi globalement résilients, engagés dans leurs études, en preuve leur taux de réussite, qu’ils sont de plus en plus francophones et qu’ils sont aussi de plus en plus nombreux à choisir le français pour la suite de leur parcours scolaire.

Investir ambitieusement dans l’accueil et la francisation des élèves est incontournable pour la nation québécoise et ce n’est pas uniquement une question d’argent : c’est aussi reconnaître l’effet d’émulation positive qu’ont plusieurs de ses élèves sur l’ensemble du système, laisser les professionnels utiliser les meilleures pratiques, comme les références à la langue et à la culture maternelles, sans y voir de menace à la société d’accueil ou favoriser des démarches peu systématisées, comme le jumelage interrégional.

Mon passage en milieu pluriethnique m’a notamment appris que l’amour de la langue ne peut se développer qu’au travers du respect et de l’affection qu’on porte à ceux qui la parlent.

Source: Entre réussite et intégration, un Québec fou de tous ses enfants

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A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.

2025/06/23 2 Comments

Sad and sick:

…Mr. Damsky’s argument that at least some of the framers meant for the Constitution to apply only to white people is by no means a new one. Evan D. Bernick, an associate law professor at Northern Illinois University, notes that the argument can be found in the Ku Klux Klan’s founding organizational documents from the late 1860s.

Among originalists, though, this interpretation has been widely rejected. Instead, conservatives have argued that much of the text of the Constitution “tilts toward liberty” for all, said Jonathan Gienapp, an associate professor of history and law at Stanford. They also note that the post-Civil War amendments guaranteeing rights to nonwhite people “washed away whatever racial taint” there was in the original document.

While Mr. Damsky’s papers were written in a formal style consistent with legal scholarship, his social media posts have been blunt, crass and ugly. A critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, he argued in one post that President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were “controlled by Jews,” whom he called “the common enemy of humanity.” In posts about Guatemalan illegal immigrants, he said that “invaders” should be “done away with by any means necessary.” He lamented the “self-flagellatory mind-set” of modern-day Germans, noting their failure to revere Hitler.

Ms. Grabowski did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Damsky said he assumed that it was the judge who graded his paper. He also said that the judge “is not a white nationalist.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “I would prefer it if he was.”

Students took their complaints to Ms. McAlister, the interim dean. She addressed the granting of the award to Mr. Damsky in at least two town-hall-style meetings, according to an email she wrote to students and an article in The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper. In the February email, the dean wrote that the law school, as a public institution, was bound by the First and 14th Amendments, meaning that no faculty member may “grade down a paper that is otherwise successful simply because he or she disagrees with the ideas the paper advances.”

Institutional neutrality, she wrote in her email, “is not agreement or complicity with the ideas that any community member advances.”

“It’s just that — neutrality,” she added. “The government — in this case, our public university — stays out of picking sides, so that, through the marketplace of ideas, you can debate and arrive at truth for yourself and for the community.”

Some at the law school agree with her stance. In an interview, John F. Stinneford, a professor at the university, said that it would be “academic misconduct” for a law professor who opposed abortion to give a lower grade to a well-argued paper advocating abortion rights.

If it were a good paper, he said, “you should put aside your moral qualms and give it an A.”

A number of students disagree, but several declined to be interviewed on the record for fear that criticizing the school, or a sitting federal judge, would harm their future job prospects.

One former student, who graduated in May, had his post-graduation job offer rescinded by a large law firm when he told them he had spoken to The New York Times for this article, criticizing Mr. Damsky’s paper and Judge Badalamenti for granting him the award. The student asked not to be identified for fear of jeopardizing other job offers.

Before his suspension, Mr. Damsky had been offered a summer internship in the local prosecutor’s office. But in early April, the prosecutor, Brian Kramer, the state attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, rescinded the offer.

“You could imagine,” Mr. Kramer said in an interview, that “having someone in your office who espouses those kinds of beliefs would cause significant mistrust in the fairness of prosecutions.”

Source: A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.

Filed under Holocaust, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , ,

C-3 Citizenship Act to Replace First Generation Cut-Off: Stalled at Second Reading

2025/06/23 1 Comment

While Conservatives support the provision to treat adoptees born abroad as Canadian-born and the fix for the small remaining 1977-81 cohort of “Lost Canadians”, they maintain their opposition to the proposed connection residency test of 1,095 days with no time restriction for the second generation born abroad, as was the case in the identical C-71 that died on the order paper.

Likely reflecting the lingering bitterness of the Liberal and NDP efforts to “hijack” S-245 bill by broadening its scope beyond fixing the 1977-81 cohort to address second generation born abroad issues, it appears the CPC will oppose the Bill every step of the way.

As a result, the Bill did not complete second reading and will thus not make it to committee before the fall, a tight timeframe in which to meet the federal court deadline of November 20.

Conservatives raised three major concerns:

  • Cumulative 1,095 residency requirement, not consecutive or time limited (e.g., within 5 years as per permanent residents);
  • Lack of estimated numbers of persons affected and related operational estimates and costs (interestingly, government members did not mention the PBO study showing a likely 115,000 persons over five years but Conservative members did:; and,
  • Need for criminality or security checks for the second generation born-abroad (may be more of a stretch to argue given we don’t do criminal or security checks on first generation born or adopted abroad).

No new information or insights by the Minister and government members compared to C-71.

My analysis of the previous Bill C-71 opens up a possible never-ending chain of citizenship also featured in their remarks.

Source: Hansard link

Filed under C-3, Citizenship Tagged with

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