Years after savage attack on newborns, birth tourism schemes thrive in NYC

2021/05/17 Leave a comment

While from the populist press, some interesting coverage of the birth tourism industry in NYC:

Three years after a deranged nanny savagely stabbed three babies in a Queens “birthing center,” the assailant will not face trial – and the unregulated, makeshift maternity wards for foreign women have only multiplied in New York City.

Some immigration experts call the “birth tourism” industry that supports these baby businesses a national security threat, as they aggressively promote themselves overseas as places for mothers to give birth to instant American citizens.

Yu Fen Wang was working as a nanny at the Meibao Birthing Care Center in Flushing on Sept. 21, 2018 when she attacked three newborns, along with two adults, while screaming she was trying to kill wolves.

Wang “was found to be not responsible due to mental disease or defect and was committed to a mental health facility” on Nov. 20, a Queens DA spokeswoman told the The Post.

All five victims in the bloody rampage survived. But baby Chloe Cao, then only days old and a New York City resident, has scars and nerve damage from the attack, according to family attorney Kenny Jiang. The two other babies and their families reportedly went back to China.

The Cao family has since filed a $10 million lawsuit against the Meibao Center’s operators, Xuexin Lin and Meiying Gao. The lawsuit remains active, and is pending the return of civil court judges on May 24. Their babycare center, now closed, was shoehorned into a three-family home in a residential neighborhood.

The attack opened a window into New York City’s thriving underground baby tourism industry, where moms-to-be visit the United States, often with immigration and paperwork assistance from one of these services, give birth in an American hospital, often on the taxpayer dime, and then spend weeks in recovery at one of these types of maternity centers. Often the facility is no more than a bedroom or partitioned space in a private home. The moms soon return home with their baby, a legitimate American citizen.

Shockingly, the 2018 bloodbath apparently did little to dissuade foreign nationals from continuing to flood these NYC centers, or to prompt local pols and agencies to begin cracking down on, or regulating, them.

The Post recently found ads for more than 80 local centers, most clustered in Flushing, advertised in Chinese-language media. A visit to several of the advertised addresses revealed each one to be in a private home.

A search of the phrase “going to the USA to give birth to a baby” last week on Chinese search engine Baidu yielded 6.3 million results.

The birthing businesses appear to be unlicensed and unregulated, and they falsely advertise overseas and on foreign websites by trumpeting deeply ingrained traditions of postnatal care. In Chinese and other cultures, relatives, friends or hired women often care for a baby in its first month of life while the mother recuperates.

“The New York Angel Baby Birthing Center … has been officially registered and certified by the U.S. government and operated in a personalized, scientific and professional manner,” reads one ad on a Chinese-language website. “As long as you have a U.S. visa, let us do the rest in realizing your dreams.”

Another reads: “Cross East U.S. Maternity Service Center provides a full range of U.S. childbirth services, allowing you to easily have an American baby with a higher starting point in life and more choices in the future … everything is governed by relevant U.S. laws. As long as you have a U.S. visa, you can leave everything else to us.”

Families, according to some online ads, are promised help with everything from the immigration processing to health care for their baby from a government-regulated medical facility.

“Our team will provide you with a full service from visa preparation to safe return to China, covering life, medical treatment and legal aspects,” reads one ad for the Ankang facility listed at 48-33 192nd St. in Queens.

Famiies often pay six figures for month-long stays at the centers.

The Post confronted nearly a dozen of the centers, and visited six of them, but inquiries were met with silence or denials. It is not clear if these facilities provide any other legitimate services.

The private maternity centers in Flushing are largely clustered around New York Presbyterian Hospital on Main Street in Queens and the ads often promote the proximity of health care facilities. The hospital did not respond to requests for comment.

Birth tourism is “immigration fraud, a burden on the American taxpayer and a national security risk,” Marguerite Telford, director of communications for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington D.C., told The Post.

“I see this as a grave national security concern and vulnerability,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Mark Zito told reporters following the 2019 indictment of a Southern California birth tourism ring, saying he fears hostile governments will use the access of American citizens within their midst to “take advantage” of the U.S.

“Birth tourism can create U.S. citizens who … don’t necessarily share our values and may have allegiances to countries of concern, [who] can nonetheless return to the United States as adults with their U.S. passports in hand,” said Jon Feere, former chief of staff for ICE.

One immigration expert said that many “birth tourists” who have their babies in the United States are wealthy and connected with the Communist party.

No state or local agency contacted by The Post accepted responsibility for the fly-by-night babycare business.

The city Administration for Children’s Services said it does not license or regulate childcare facilities and directed The Post to the NYPD. The NYPD referred immigration issues to the “appropriate agency.” The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection said it had no jurisdiction. The city Health Department pointed to Albany. The state Health Department said it “has regulatory oversight of licensed health care facilities, such as hospitals … not places involved in ‘birth tourism.’”

Local elected officials who publicly demanded an investigation and reforms in the immediate aftermath of the attack, have also failed to act.

“Once we have the facts, my colleagues and I will work very closely to close any loopholes in the system to make sure that we will never see this kind of ugliness in our community again,” Queens Assemblyman Ron Kim said at the time.

Kim did not respond to more than a half dozen messages seeking comment. City Councilman Peter Koo also did not respond to repeated messages.

Kim told one local outlet at the time that a crackdown on similar “unsafe” facilities in Los Angeles “spurred a new market in places like Queens and Long Island.”

The feds in 2015 dismantled a group of maternity centers in California and then in 2019 charged 19 individuals with running a birth tourism ring that catered to wealthy Chinese women seeking U.S. citizenship for their babies.

One of the defendants in that case, Dongyuan Li, paid cash for a $2.1 million home in Irvine, Calif. and for a $118,000 Mercedes, according to the indictment. She has since pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud and one count of visa fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California.

State Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky, who represents Flushing, said days after the attack that she would pursue legislation, if needed, to prevent similar incidents.

But she recently told The Post that there will likely be no state action, that it’s an issue for city agencies and federal immigration officials.

“This medical tourism, maternity tourism, is very common in the Asian community, even for locals,” said Stavisky. “The certificate of occupancy, this is where the city can step in and perhaps check in on some of these things. Locally, the zoning laws are very lax.”

The city Buildings Department lists nearly a dozen services not allowed as home businesses, but child care is not among them. The City Planning Department, which oversees zoning issues such as commercial enterprises operating in residential areas, did not return messages.

Babies born in the United States are American citizens according to the 14th Amendment, a status coveted by many foreigners for the access it provides to education, health care, employment and other opportunities, sometimes funded by taxpayers.

The children enjoy U.S. citizenship even if they quickly return to their mother’s homeland and grow up overseas. These American-born children can then fast-track family members to become U.S. citizens once they reach adulthood, said Telford from the Center for Immigration Studies.

“American citizenship is still the most desirable thing in the world,” said Jiang, the attorney representing Baby Chloe and her family. “The scale of the problem is just amazing.”

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates 33,000 babies are born to women on tourist visas each year, while hundreds of thousands more babies are born to illegal aliens or mothers holding temporary visas.

Telford said the mothers commit fraud by visiting the U.S. on a tourist visa for the unstated purpose of having a baby.

“Tourists who come to the United States to give birth and receive taxpayer-funded public assistance to cover the associated costs of their births or have the expenses waived by a hospital do not have to pay back any of the funds in order to get a future tourist visa,” reports the CIS.

A 2015 study of birth tourism by Dr. Michel Mikhael of Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Calif., found that its babies had longer hospital stays, required more surgical intervention and cost more than twice as much as U.S. resident births.

The Trump administration in early 2020, in the wake of crackdown on these facilities in California, directed immigration officials to deny women visas if they determined the expectant mothers were coming to the United States solely to give birth.

And Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) in January introduced a bill that would make it illegal to visit the United States for the purposes of having a baby. She said, “American citizenship should not be for sale.”

Source: Years after savage attack on newborns, birth tourism schemes thrive in NYC

And ICYMI, an earlier article by Graeme Wood on the impact of COVID-19 travel restrictions on birth tourism in Richmond (will do a national update this summer once I have the CIHI data):

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many sectors, and this includes birth tourism in Richmond.

Richmond Hospital saw non-resident births drop from about 40 per month to an average of 10 per month in the first five months of the pandemic, a drop of about 75 per cent.

There were 57 babies born to non-resident mothers between April 1 and mid-September, according to Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), who released the number in response to a Freedom of Information request.

In the previous 12 months (April 2019 to March 2020), there were 507 babies born to non-resident mothers at Richmond Hospital, which is about one-quarter of all births at the hospital.

During the first part of the pandemic, the number of babies born to non-residents was about eight per cent of all births.

Birth tourism falls under federal jurisdiction – Canada allows anyone born in the country to receive Canadian citizenship under a principle called “jus soli.”

Birth tourism is when women intentionally come to Canada to give birth in order to secure a Canadian passport for their child.

https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/birth-tourism-drops-by-75-per-cent-early-in-covid-19-pandemic-3517019

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Diane Francis: Trudeau’s immigration scheme is just another way to redistribute Canada’s wealth

2021/05/17 Leave a comment

While Francis’ rhetoric is over the top, but her focus on per capita GDP growth versus overall GDP growth is valid:

It’s hard to imagine a bigger bungle by the Trudeau government than the vaccine fiasco and budget carnage, but now there’s immigration. Aims are to allow 1.2 million more permanent residents into Canada in the next three years when other, well-managed countries like Australia and New Zealand, are preoccupied with retaining the living standards of their existing populaces by trimming immigration.

“History teaches us that when we grow our immigration levels, we grow our economy,” Canadian immigration minister Marco Mendicino said earlier this year, a lawyer without economic credentials.

In March 2020, he announced a target of one million new permanent residents by 2022. Then in October, he bumped this up to 1.2 million from 2021 to 2023. This is more than triple the U.S. per capita immigration rate which has nearly nine times Canada’s population. (That doesn’t include the flow of illegal immigration into the U.S.)

The ravages of the pandemic have resulted in prudence elsewhere. The U.S. reduced its visa approvals a year ago, Australia lowered its immigration target to 160,000 (with 28 million people compared to Canada’s 37.7 million), and New Zealand said its priority was to train people already in the country for available jobs.

Source: Diane Francis: Trudeau’s immigration scheme is just another way to redistribute Canada’s wealth

Filed under Immigration Tagged with

#COVID19 #Immigration effects: March 2021

2021/05/17 Leave a comment

My regular monthly update. A few changes from earlier versions. 

Slides now have one-year and two-year comparisons, highlighting change from 2019 pre-COVID baseline as well as well as post-COVID 2020. Citizenship application numbers include first quarter 2021. 

Slide 3 summarizes the changes by program. 

In terms of trends and observations, the overall picture is that of a return to the 2019 baseline, partially for Permanent Residents but close to normal for IMP, TFWP and study permits except where noted below. No significant recovery in citizenship numbers. 

  • While still lower than 2019 baseline, PR admissions are recovering from their 2020 low. First quarter numbers of 70,000 suggest 280,000 for 2021 but government changes (lowering of Express Entry minimum score, Temporary resident to permanent resident pathway program, likely others to come) will result in higher numbers. 
  • TR to Permanent Residents transition continues to remain at about half of total Permanent Residents numbers. 
  • TRs, both IMP and TFWP, have all increased compared to 2019 save for IMP/Agreements.and TFWP/Caregivers. Most dramatic increase is with respect to “Other IMP Participants” which largely reflects open work permits for Hong Kong residents with HKSAR and BNO passports. 
  • Study permit holders have increased from the 2019 baseline. 
  • Asylum claimants remain significantly lower given border closures and travel restrictions. 
  • Citizenship numbers remain much lower than the 2019 baseline, reflecting the partial reopening and move to online testing and ceremonies. 
  • Visitor visas remain largely closed 

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Canada announces new pathway to permanent residency for families of crash victims

2021/05/15 Leave a comment

Of note. Generous, given applies to extended families, and yet another contribution to meeting immigration levels:

Ottawa is launching a new policy to help the families of victims of two major airline disasters become permanent residents in Canada, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said Thursday.

The new policy will apply to relatives of anyone who died on board Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 or Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, so long as those victims were Canadian citizens, permanent residents or found eligible on their application for permanent residency.

The policy applies to people currently in Canada, and anyone who made a refugee claim after these two disasters happened is also eligible to apply under the new policy.

Mendicino said the federal government is introducing this public policy, which will remain in place until May 11, 2022, to demonstrate compassion and solidarity with the families in their efforts to seek justice.

“I’ve had the privilege of speaking with some of the families were related to the victims of flight PS752. Grief and anguish is real and ongoing,” he said.

“Families are in pain. They still ask questions.”

Kourosh Doustshenas, whose partner Forough Khadem died in the crash, said the association that represent the families of the victims welcomes the new policy.

“We appreciate the government of Canada is taking these steps to support the families,” he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Fifty-five Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents were among the 176 people killed when a Ukrainian jetliner was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile minutes after taking off from Tehran on Jan. 8, 2020.

The Ethiopian Airlines passenger plane crashed near Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019, claiming the lives of 157 people, including 18 Canadians.

Mendicino said the new program provides a pathway to permanent residency to people whose loved ones made Canada their home before being so suddenly taken.

He said a relative a relative could be spouse, common-law partner, child, grandchild, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece or nephew.

Applicants may still be eligible even if they have entered Canada without the required visa or other documents, failed to comply with certain conditions or have worked or studied without being authorized under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, he said.

Doustshenas the government should allow family members outside of Canada to apply.

“We are hoping (the government) will expand (the new policy) to be more inclusive,” he said. “We want to make sure other people who are not in Canada also get the chance to travel here and apply for permanent residency.”

He said the policy should be expanded to include the families of Iranian students who where among the victims of the plane shootdown and had the intention to work and live in Canada after graduation.

Mendicino said his department is working on further measures to facilitate permanent residence applications for certain members of victims’ families who are currently outside Canada, and it will provide updates on this once those measures are in place.

Former Liberal public safety minister Ralph Goodale, who was named Canada’s special adviser on the response to the crash, released a report on the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in December concluding that it’s vital it is for the investigation into this air disaster to be transparent to ensure accountability.

Ten Iranian officials were indicted over the shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane by Tehran military prosecutor Gholamabbas Torki, who avoided naming those responsible when he announced the indictments last month.

Doustshenas the families of the victims can’t trust the Iranian justice system because the Tehran military prosecutor didn’t disclose the names of those charged, nor the alleged offences.

“We still don’t know what happened. We still don’t know the truth. We haven’t seen any kind of justice,” he said.

“We are hoping through an independent investigation by Canada and other countries, we can finally get to the bottom of that and find the truth.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last month that Canada would work with the international community to reform aviation standards and to ensure the families of victims “get closure, get compensation and mostly get justice from Iran.”

Source: Canada announces new pathway to permanent residency for families of crash victims

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Farber and Fisman: The overlap between lockdown agitators and hate groups is a threat to us all

2021/05/15 Leave a comment

Of note:

The pandemic has been a major source of disruption in the lives of Canadians for more than a year, leaving many of us frightened. For some people, that fear means opportunity.

In 2008, epidemiologists developed models of the “coupled” dynamics of epidemics and the fear generated by them, showing that behavioural changes engendered by fear can spread as a parallel epidemic, making the infectious disease worse. When two such epidemics interact, the process is referred to as a “syndemic.”

The pandemic, then, has undoubtedly been a syndemic of infection and fear, preyed upon by well-known internet influencers who sat at the core of hate networks that existed before the first outbreak. Now, we have to reckon with a syndemic of infection and hate in a system too vulnerable to both – or face very real consequences.

According to a recent report in The New York Times, many experts now believe the United States may never reach herd immunity. This is largely due to hesitancy around safe and effective vaccines, which is being driven in part by anti-science and pro-conspiracy beliefs. These movements have only sown confusion as people navigate the informational minefield that is a public-health crisis, and they threaten to keep us all in pandemic limbo for the foreseeable future.

Indeed, since the beginning of the global outbreak, conspiratorial anti-establishment movements have only gained momentum, finding common cause in opposing mask mandates and lockdown measures and sucking up oxygen by undermining valid criticisms of government health orders. Rallies and protests have been organized almost every weekend across the country, and those who have found fame in the process bill themselves as defenders of our freedoms. They march with a list of grievances and conspiracy theories, but all believe they are standing up against their misguided idea of tyranny.

Outdoor rallies may not in and of themselves confer much risk on attendees; COVID-19 is some twentyfold less infectious outdoors than indoors as a result of dominant aerosol transmission. However, these gatherings undermine confidence in public-health guidance and promote messaging that is likely to further damage communities already hard-hit by this pandemic.

Ekos Research has found that 8 per cent to 20 per cent of Canadians have views that could be characterized as being distorted via disinformation, with men, minorities and lower-income individuals more likely to be disinformed. We know that minority and lower-income communities in Canada have already been the hardest-hit by COVID-19, and now we’ve seen the promotion of disinformation deepening the problem. Vaccine hesitancy also tracks closely with being disinformed; the promotion of disinformation will continue to injure communities even if it becomes possible to move beyond the pandemic via vaccination.

The principal actors of the anti-lockdown movement have either been or rubbed elbows with some significant haters on the scene. Vancouver neo-Nazi Brian Ruhe, who at one point organized a mock book burning, was involved in its earliest iteration. Quebec’s far-right conspiracy streamer Alexis Cossette-Trudel, a big name among France’s QAnon following, is an important mouthpiece of the francophone anti-lockdown movement. Neo-Nazi Paul Fromm is a fixture at rallies in both Ontario and in Kelowna, B.C. Antimask activist Chris Saccoccia’s social-media feeds feature Holocaust denial and racist posts.

Perhaps one of Canada’s most persistent agitators is Kevin Johnston, who made national headlines in 2017 when he was charged with the willful promotion of hatred against Muslims. In 2019, he lost a $2.5-million judgmentfor his role in racially motivated defamation against Toronto philanthropist Mohamad Fakih in which he repeatedly accused him of being a terrorist; the judge called his comments about Mr. Fakih “hate speech at its worst.” Now, Mr. Johnston is running for mayor of Calgary and has shifted gears by portraying himself as an anti-lockdown and antimask influencer.

The fact that an anti-public health agenda aimed at undermining the Canadian economy and the health and well-being of Canadians has been taken up by a rogues’ gallery with a long track record in disinformation and promotion of hatred should give us all pause. And with our country now approaching 25,000 dead due to COVID-19, Canadians should ask themselves whether the promotion of disinformation – and the undermining of the tools and measures that will permit a return to normalcy – has crossed the line from mere grotesque opportunism to active, malicious harm.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-overlap-between-lockdown-agitators-and-hate-groups-is-a-threat-to/

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Are golden visas a golden opportunity? Assessing the economic origins and outcomes of residence by investment programmes in the EU

2021/05/15 Leave a comment

Good detailed study. Money quote: “our analysis suggests that wealthy investor migrants may be better conceptualised as mobile, profit-oriented populations akin to tourists and businesspeople, rather than as long term-oriented immigrants.” Conclusion below:

The twentieth century saw a remarkable shift from screening new immigrants based on racial origins to screening based on human capital contributions (Joppke 2005; FitzGerald and Cook-Martín 2014). The spread of RBI programmes in the twenty-first century adds a new dimension: screening new residents by economic capital contributions only. The results of this investigation suggest an upper limit on Ellerman’s (2019) finding that western countries now devalue the economic offerings of foreigners when selecting new members. In contrast to the policies aimed at workers that she examines, here we see that countries are indeed supplying pathways to long-term residence and citizenship for those making economic contributions – as long as they are very sizeable. Notably, the injections are one-off and the new residents are not expected to continue to contribute to economic growth in the same way that migrant workers might; they must simply maintain the original investment. The trend suggests a short-term calculation on the part of states, seeking to plug economic gaps, as our analysis finds, rather than a longer-term orientation of crafting a middle-class national identity (cf. Elrick and Winter 2018; Ellerman 2019). If social capital (Portes 1998), human capital (Stark, Helmenstein, and Fürnkranz-Prskawetz 1998; Ellerman 2019), and ethnic capital (Mateos and Durand 2012; Kim2018) have captured the attention of social scientists analysing migration, the developments tracked here suggest that a renewed focus on economic capital may be warranted. We find that states continue to harness mobility policies in service of economic objectives, now in a more starkly transactional manner, and – as we show – no matter what the political orientation of the government may be.

If RBI programmes are becoming an increasingly popular policy option, not all countries see the same uptake. Demand in Europe is concentrated in a handful of pro- grammes: just four countries represent 75 percent of all investor residents. The programmes now bring nearly €3.5 billion to the Union annually, yet the economic benefits are uneven. Indeed, only in two countries, Latvia and Portugal, are the economic injections large enough to represent a significant proportion of FDI. However in no country do they represent a substantial proportion of GDP, suggesting that concerns about macroeconomic destabilisation are unwarranted.

Our analysis reveals that economic decline leads to a greater likelihood that countries will start programmes, and that if the economic decline occurred during the Eurocrisis, the likelihood is yet greater – an argument proposed but not demonstrated by the literature (e.g. Parker 2017; Holleran 2019; Dzankic 2018; Veteto 2014). The choice of investment options, too, is largely responsive to economic need when governments implement real estate and business investment options, though not government bond options. Furthermore, the spread of programmes itself does not lead to more programmes: there is no contagion effect. As such, driving the onset of RBI programmes is more than mere client politics or neo-liberal ideology (cf. Mavelli 2018); economic need is a significant factor behind them. However, investors may stymie government intentions to use programmes to boost several areas of the economy, for they overwhelmingly invest in real estate if given the option.

Furthermore, our analysis suggests that wealthy investor migrants may be better conceptualised as mobile, profit-oriented populations akin to tourists and businesspeople, rather than as long term-oriented immigrants. The results lend support to qualitative work that identifies such mobile populations as ‘flexible citizens’ (Ong 1999), who use investment to multiply their options and secure additional bases, rather than to pack up and immigrate or invest in a growing economy (see also Ley 2010; Surak 2020a). We also find that countries with strong tourism sectors can charge more for their programmes as well. Yet they are not merely profit maximisers, choosing a price that will attract the most applicants; they respond to internal issues too, changing price in accordance with economic growth and employment rates.

A number of analysts have raised warning flags that investor migrants may price locals out of real estate (Scherrer and Thirion 2018; Holleran 2019). Our analysis shows the concern is unwarranted: the proportion of RBI real estate transactions in the national market is miniscule in nearly all cases. Notably, these programmes attract more distant and often ‘browner’ others than the fellow Europeans who constitute the greatest proportion of foreign real estate buyers and raise less media hype, suggesting that xenophobia may lie behind the concern. Greece is the sole, but significant, exception where the scale of the programme could indeed destabilise the property market. As real estate investment tends to be concentrated in specific locales (Friedland and Calderon 2017; Viesturs, Pukite, and Nikuradze 2017), regional and city-level data are necessary to further identify whether more limited destabilisation is occurring in particular areas.

What has been the impact of Covid-19 on these programmes? The sudden hardening of borders across the world has sent many wealthy people looking for ways to hedge their risks by securing mobility options and a Plan B (Surak 2020b, 2020c). To date, as we show, national-level healthcare statistics have been insignificant, but Covid-19 may encourage wealthy investors to select countries that have handled the pandemic well or that offer state-of-the-art healthcare. Covid-19 may also bring a shift away from a short-term ‘tourist-like’ calculation to a medium-term calculation preferring a place for longer-stint stays.

Regarding supply, Covid-19 is likely to increase the attractiveness of RBI programmes as a way to draw in foreign investment. Our study found that countries are more prone to start programmes after a period of slowed economic growth, particularly after a systemic recession. If the economic downturn spurred by the pandemic continues, it is likely that new countries will start their own programmes, replicating the pattern we found, and that countries with RBI offerings already in place will attempt to develop them further to address deepening economic need. Even if the schemes to date have been small, they still offer a means to attract additional resources at little cost. With real estate the most popular qualifying option, the investment boost is likely to be concentrated in the property and construction sector, which itself is transforming as the pandemic reconfigures work patterns and the desirability of urban living. Even if the European Commission continues to call for ending the programmes, countries are more likely to adapt their RBI offerings – perhaps by shifting them closer to, or even transforming them into, entrepreneurial options – rather than do away with them entirely.

Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2021.1915755

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with ,

Why ‘Canadian’ shouldn’t be an option on the census

2021/05/14 Leave a comment

If I recall correctly, it was a campaign by the Toronto Star that led to “Canadian” being included in the Census, thus supplanting British and French to a certain degree (pre-internet days). Given the large percentage reporting “Canadian” (just under one-third), unrealistic:

Enumerator: “What origin, Ma’am?”

Lady: “Canadian, of course!”

Enumerator: “But you KNOW we don’t take down Canadian origin.”

Lady: “Well, then! Follow Darwin’s theory, and enter us as descended from apes!”

A century and a half ago, the May 6, 1871 edition of The Canadian Illustrated News ran a comic depicting an enumerator collecting data. The cartoon, with a nod to Charles Darwin’s recently released The Descent of Man, highlights the controversial decision to not allow Canadians to identify as ethnically Canadian.

It’s a controversy worth revisiting as Canadians consider how to describe their own complicated ancestries on the 2021 census. When the cartoon ran, Canadian was disallowed as an ethnic category to prevent the statistical fragmentation of French Canadians. The decision caused controversy, in part because it prevented the term from becoming a measure of inclusion and national unity.

Perhaps the critics were right. Today a Canadian ethnicity is allowed by the census, and it’s the largest single ethnic group in the country. However, 150 years after Confederation, should we consider a third of the country identifying as ethnically Canadian a good thing? Or does a concept of a Canadian ethnicity actually divide us?

The 1867 British North America Act mandated a decennial census, starting in 1871. Although censuses had been conducted previously in colonies that would become part of Canada, they were rudimentary initiatives that produced unreliable statistical portraits. The 1871 census, by contrast, was the first to be conducted using standardized methods and centralized bodies: It was “scientific.”

Despite being characterized as more professional than previous endeavours, the census was “in fact a fundamentalist Catholic ethnic-national project.” As historian and sociologist Bruce Curtis details in The Politics of Population: State Formation, Statistics, and the Census of Canada, 1840-1875, leadership was handed to civil servant and writer Joseph-Charles Taché, a French-Canadian Catholic nationalist who understood that the census was a valuable political tool. With it, he intended to build a “monument” to the existence of the large, unified French-Canadian nation.

The 1871 census was the first to distinguish ethnic origin from birthplace, and enumerators received strict instructions about allowable responses. Mr. Taché understood that, particularly in a heterogeneous society such as Canada, ethnic identities were malleable and fluid. By denying Canadian as an option, he avoided splitting French Canadians into two camps, while denying the term’s use by multiple communities as a unifier. British residents were divided into constituent categories such as English, Welsh or Scottish. Indigenous nations were forced into the singular Indian category, while the only mixed ethnicity that the census recognized was people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, who were categorized as “half-breeds.”

Ultimately, Mr. Taché‘s categorizations produced the illusory unity that he wanted: The final reports found that French was the country’s largest ethnic group, and that curiously enough the new country of Canada held no ethnic Canadians. The actual returns reveal numerous examples of respondents attempting to give their ethnicity as Canadian, only to have their answer scratched out and “corrected” by a reviewing enumerator.

Canadians can now select multiple ethnicities to better reflect their heritage, including Canadian. Although the 1986 and 1991 censuses found only 0.5 per cent and 4 per cent respectively were ethnically Canadian, that number shot up to 31 per cent with the 1996 census after Canadian was listed in suggested ethnicities, becoming the fastest growing demographic. This figure has held steady, with 32 per cent of respondents selecting the option in 2016.

Ethnic identities can be difficult to coherently define, and those mulling how to describe their own complex heritages in the most recent census may well find that the term Canadian best encapsulates their sense of self. Research has shown that respondents identifying as Canadian are usually French or British in background. The sudden boom in the mid-1990s of Canadians identifying as ethnically Canadian could be interpreted as a heartening sign of growing connection and national identity, particularly in the aftermath of the 1995 Quebec independence referendum. However, as sociologist Jack Jedwab points out, the trend can also be understood as a manifestation of an ugly “old stock” xenophobic nationalism that’s been long simmering below the surface, and the use or denial of a seemingly unifying term can reinforce tacit lines of belonging and ownership, ultimately undermining intercultural solidarity in Canada.

Canadian multiculturalist discourse and the demise of the two-founding nation thesis alienated some who viewed their national identity as inherently British or French, to the point of, according to sociologist Himani Bannerji, stimulating “white supremacist attitudes.” The fact that respondents identifying as Canadian remain overwhelmingly French and British in heritage points not only to a lingering sense of entitlement and ownership, but also to a sense of exclusion felt by the communities that are not recording themselves as such.

Critics of the 1871 census pointed out that limiting respondents to a single category, while disallowing the answer of Canadian, prevented respondents with ancestors from multiple communities from adequately or accurately communicating their identity or family history. Taché used denial of Canadian ethnicity to force a perceived unity upon Canadians of French descent at the expense of multiethnic realities, ultimately highlighting existing fractures.

The very idea of a Canadian ethnicity, through its use and denial, functions as a tool of othering. Canadians today can give multiple responses to questions about their ethnic identity, helping better capture the kaleidoscopic nature of our national past and present. However, because there are options beyond picking a single category, the availability of the Canadian ethnicity in the census undermines national multicultural ideals, implicitly dividing the country between inheritors and interlopers.

150 years ago, Taché disallowed Canadian for ethno-nationalist reasons. For the sake of multicultural solidarity in the 21st century, we should do the same thing, albeit under different motives. It has lost any unifying function it would have held in 1871 and should be delisted as an option.

If diversity is indeed Canada’s strength, we should do away with ideas of a Canadian ethnicity.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-why-canadian-shouldnt-be-an-option-on-the-census/

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

The Cesspool That Gave Rise to Stephen Miller

2021/05/14 Leave a comment

More background on some of the more prominent anti-immigration advocates:

Last August, the conservative writer David Horowitz, who mentored Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, emailed me. Subject: “Your book.” He wrote, “I was more than generous with you, and you repaid me by raping me and my reputation, which I assure you will survive your malicious drivel.”

The 82-year-old former Marxist was referring to my biography, Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda, which drew in part from email exchanges Horowitz had forwarded to me, showing conversations with Miller between 2012 and 2017, including those with him feeding Miller talking points for some of Trump’s most incendiary campaign speeches, which the reality TV mogul regurgitated. Horowitz met Miller as a Santa Monica high school student and shaped his career, introducing him to Tea Party Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachman, who gave him his first job as a press secretary, and later to then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who also hired him.

Horowitz had previously told me he was trusting me with his correspondence because he read a 2018 interview in which I discussed my aversion to labeling people: “When you label someone, you do violence to them.” He said he feared being labeled a “hatemonger,” a word that had been used to describe him, and believed I was unlikely to label him or Miller. It was a strange argument given that Horowitz has dedicated much of his life to labeling entire groups, calling the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) “fascists” and progressives “totalitarians.” After my book was published, he featured me as the top article on his site, calling me “an anti-American racist,” and in a separate email, called me “stupid, lazy or deranged.”

Horowitz’s art is projection, which he teaches to his disciples. People fighting racism are “Nazis.” Activists fighting inequality are “oppressors.” Classified as an anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center, he has for decades groomed young conservatives to adopt an incendiary, extremist approach through his “School for Political Warfare,” and connected prominent right-wing politicians and media personalities at expensive West Coast Retreats and Restoration Weekends. “The political left has declared war on America and its constitutional system, and is willing to collaborate with America’s enemies abroad and criminals at home to bring America down,” reads the mission statement for the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Now, two writers who have known Horowitz for half a century, Ronald Radosh and Sol Stern, have written a piece in The New Republic calling for an investigation into his nonprofit’s “potential abuse of its tax-exempt status.” Per the Internal Revenue Code: “All section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate.” They recount Horowitz’s visits to a “psychic healer” and his “relentless drive toward the violent fringes.” As a radical leftist, they added, their former friend “celebrated the burning of a bank by a student mob. Today, he’s an intellectual pyromaniac who honors the MAGA mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6.”

In a strategy paper Horowitz emailed Miller in December 2012, as the Republican Party was publicly reckoning with its failure to appeal to communities of color, Horowitz called for Republicans to launch a campaign of fear. He later said they “must begin every confrontation by punching progressives in the mouth.” His drive to intimidate and terrorize has compelled him to threaten lawsuits against reporters, including me, accusing me of “malicious and defamatory statements” in a letter from his lawyer that closely resembled those he has sent to others. It’s an echo of how he spent the ’90s, coordinating lawyers to threaten legal action on behalf of people accused of bigotry.

Horowitz, who casts himself as colorblind, has tweeted content such as “The Most Dangerous Social Problem in America Today: Anti-White racism,” and attacks women of color in positions of power, saying of Rep. Ilhan Omar, “This witch is part of a terrorist network… should be deported now.” He denies Palestinians their national identity. “There is no Palestine, there are no Palestinians,” he has tweeted.

His tirades caught the attention of John Tanton, an influential white supremacist who published an English translation of the virulently racist French novel Camp of the Saints—which describes the destruction of the white world by brown refugee “monsters,” a book that Miller recommended to Breitbart for an article pointing out its “parallels” with real life. Tanton, who died in 2019, featuredHorowitz on his website and highlighted his work through his journal, The Social Contract. He also wrote him and his colleague Peter Collier at least one letter, which The Daily Beast is reporting on here for the first time and is housed in the partially sealed archive of Tanton’s papers at the University of Michigan. In the letter, obtained from Virginia attorney Hassan Ahmad—who is suingto unseal the entire archive—Tanton rants about gay men and HIV and muses bizarrely about the rectum as “an ideal cultural medium: it is wet; its (sic) warm, it is chock full of nutrients, and has a rich blood supply to provide oxygen for those (aerobic) organisms that need this nutrient.” Horowitz did not respond to requests for comment about Tanton or the nature of their relationship, if any.

Tanton also shared Horowitz’s work with Dan Stein, the head of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which Tanton created with heiress Cordelia Scaife May to restrict the flow of brown and Black immigrants into the United States. Tanton wrote separately, “As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?” Later, in the White House, Horowitz’s protégé Miller would implement restrictive immigration policies that echoed recommendations issued by FAIR almost verbatim, including limiting family-based legal immigration and attacking sanctuary jurisdictions.

What people like Horowitz and Miller believe, although Miller is careful to phrase it differently, is that white men make America great. White European males created “America’s unique political culture… [which] led the world in abolishing slavery and establishing the principles of ethnic and racial inclusion,” Horowitz wrote in his book Hating Whitey, ignoring the central role of racialized people in the civil rights movement. “We are a nation besieged by peoples ‘of color’ trying to immigrate to our shores to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunities and rights our society offers them.”

It’s a view that has become mainstream in the radicalized Republican Party, which has surrendered to its once-fringe white supremacists. Miller’s recently launched nonprofit, America’s First Legal (White Men First Legal), is attacking efforts to help immigrants, non-white U.S. workers and the LGBTQ community. Soon it will be women. He is Horowitz 2.0, more powerful than his mentor, leading a full-fledged assault on the teaching of critical race theory and diversity in schools through litigation and regular appearances on Fox News and other right-wing media. People must understand the man who made him, who helped forge our era’s banality of extremism.

Horowitz was right when he guessed that I would be reluctant to label him or Miller a “hatemonger.” I’ve seen firsthand the damage that labels have done to people I love, such as my father, who immigrated here from Mexico. But I also believe journalists have a responsibility to use accurate words to describe the actions of people in power. Horowitz and Miller not only made careers of hatemongering—they’ve made it a centerpiece of modern right-wing ideology.

Source: The Cesspool That Gave Rise to Stephen Miller

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , ,

Immigration Minister open to raise permanent residency caps

2021/05/14 Leave a comment

Of note, more signs of government determination to meet 2021 levels target of 401,000 (January-March 2021, 70,425 permanent resident admissions, or an annualized rate of about 280,000). Modernization remarks also of note:

Canada’s Immigration Minister says he’s not ruling out expanding a new program that would grant permanent residency to 90,000 temporary foreign workers and international student graduates as part of the country’s annual immigration goal.

“I am open to discussing whether or not to revisit the current caps,” Marco Mendicino said in an interview Wednesday.

He made his comment after delivering a speech on modernizing immigration earlier in the day. He said in the speech to the Canadian Club that more than 50,000 people have expressed interest in the spaces since last Thursday’s opening for applications.

He said the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship department needs to carefully assess the early results of the program, including the quality of applications, and see how quickly the department hits the 90,000 target.

“At that point, I will certainly have a much greater line of sight on whether or not there may be a need to revisit the caps.”

Asked if he could secure cabinet approval for such a shift, Mr. Mendicino said, “Well, we got this far, didn’t we? I am open to revisiting the caps.”

In mid-April, the minister announced the plan to allow 20,000 temporary foreign workers in health care, 30,000 workers in other occupations deemed essential and 40,000 international students who have graduated from a university or college to apply to become permanent residents.

However, migrant groups have criticized the program, saying program exclusions and requirements shut out many refugees, undocumented people and thousands of migrants, with caps in application streams meaning few will be able to get their applications in before spots are filled.

In a statement, NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said Wednesday that the rollout of the new pathways to permanent residency for the 90,000 applicants has been problematic, adding it excludes many essential workers and does not recognize those who have lost status.

Also Wednesday, Mr. Mendicino called for moving toward a paperless immigration system that would offer prospective new Canadians more opportunities to file claims online and even be sworn in virtually.

“The reality is that our immigration system is one that has been bogged down by paper. We need to change that,” Mr. Mendicino said in the speech to the Canadian Club. “The technology is behind the times.”

As Canada has raised levels of immigration – the goal is 401,000 new permanent residents this year – Mr. Mendicino said there have been challenges in capacity and processing times exacerbated by the pandemic.

“We need to retire our systems that are long past their best-before date,” he said.

Mr. Mendicino said the recent federal budget commits more than $800-million to create a new digital platform to replace the existing Global Case Management System, which the department uses to process citizenship and immigration services applications.

In the interview, Mr. Mendicino said there is an online component to immigration now. “But what I would like to do is transform the entirety of our system,” he said.

“We still have many aspects of the system that have to be done in person or through paper-based applications. Transforming the system means that every aspect of that process will be an online application process with in-person meetings being substituted and replaced by digital and virtual meetings.”

He said he expects there will be a dedicated department team to look at the issue and drive it forward. “I think it’s a safe thing to say this will be a multiyear project, but not that long,” he said.

Ms. Kwan said that while digitizing the immigration application process is “long overdue,” the Liberals have been using this as an excuse to avoid talking about current delays.

“The process to move to a new system could take years and the government has failed to present a plan or provide resources to address current backlogs in a reasonable timeline,” she said.

But Mr. Mendicino said the department is well-advanced on its goals of meeting its target of 401,000 new permanent residents this year.

Jasraj Singh Hallan, the Conservative immigration critic, echoed Ms. Kwan’s concerns, saying the Tories have long called for the modernization of the immigration system. But he said Mr. Mendicino’s announcement does nothing to address thousands of applicants caught in backlogs.

“Because of the Liberal government’s poor management of the immigration system, outdated systems, and paper applications, families who have been trying to reunite with their loved ones have been stuck in massive backlogs and delayed processing times causing hardship,” he said in a statement.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-immigration-minister-open-to-raise-permanent-residency-caps/

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

FATAH: The census battle over mother tongues

2021/05/14 Leave a comment

Not sure to which extent the campaign mentioned by Fatah makes a difference. 2016 Census reported 502,700 Punjabi speakers, 211,995 Urdu:

There are times when one wonders if the policy of multiculturalism is a value worth enshrining as a Canadian value or whether it’s a time bomb that is slowly eroding the foundations of our country.

Where once we had to bring the Quebecois and Anglo Canadians together and bridge the Protestant-Catholic divide, today we are facilitating endless petty schisms among new Canadians, matters often seeped in the very hostility they escaped.

Source: FATAH: The census battle over mother tongues

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →