In Denmark, Fears Grow Among Syrian Asylum Seekers As Residence Permits Are Revoked

2021/04/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

In 2019, Danish authorities issued a report stating that the security situation in some parts of Syria had “improved significantly.” Last year, that report was used as justification to begin reevaluating hundreds of Danish residence permits granted to Syrian refugees from the area around and including the capital Damascus.

Now some of those refugees are being told, officially, that their time in Denmark is up.

Among those affected are Heba Alrejleh and Radwan Jomaa, a couple from Damascus. Jomaa left Syria in 2013, traveling first to Egypt and later making his way to Italy. Upon landing there, he says, the Syrians on his boat set off in different directions, with some heading for Sweden and others for France.

Jomaa chose Denmark, having heard about the country’s welcoming reputation.

He was soon joined by Alrejleh and the kids — Aya, who is now 11, and Mohamed, now 10. Their youngest, four-year-old Lilian, was born in Denmark.

The family lived for several years in the town of Skive, though it was far from Jomaa’s job at a pizzeria near Aarhus.

Meanwhile, in neighboring countries like Germany and the Netherlands, friends and family who had fled Syria around the same time were starting to get permanent residence and even citizenship. Surely, they thought, the same would soon be true for themselves.

So in December, with a mind to putting down roots, the couple found a small row house just outside the city of Silkeborg. Here, their three kids could go to a quieter school, Jomaa would have a shorter commute and Alrejleh would be able to continue her studies. She dreams of becoming a nurse.

On the day they were packing to move, a notification arrived from the immigration service informing the family that they were being sent back to Syria.

Jomaa was shocked.

“This decision means life or death,” he says. “The words ‘to send us back to Syria’ means to destroy our lives.”

Jomaa says his family has nothing and no one left in Syria. Because he participated in protests against the Assad regime, he fears he would be arrested upon return.

The couple has appealed the decision, but for now their lives are on hold. The walls of their new apartment remain bare, the living room almost empty.

Alrejleh, whose first husband was killed before her eyes in Syria, says this is not the new beginning she’d dreamed of.

“All I can think about is the decision from the immigration service,” she says. “Otherwise I would be doing many things: continuing my studies, raising my children, dreaming about their future. Lots of things. But it’s all at a standstill.”

Jomaa, who says he’s been having nightmares, doesn’t understand why Denmark would do this.

“The name Denmark used to be a shining example when it came to human rights. But now racism is ruining Denmark’s reputation in the whole world,” he says.

But scaring asylum seekers away seems to be the government’s goal, says Michala Bendixen, who heads the Danish advocacy group Refugees Welcome.

“We have a new expression now among migrant researchers called ‘negative nation branding,'” she explains. “We’re trying to scare people away from Denmark, deliberately, by telling stories about how bad life is as an asylum seeker is here, how very, very limited your rights will be if you are granted asylum — that you should never feel safe or secure about your future here, because even if you are among the lucky ones who are granted asylum, you will be kicked out sooner or later.”

Bendixen says Denmark has been moving in this direction for decades. But the country’s most recent hard turn on immigration is part of an attempt by the center-left government, voted into office in 2019, to capture the populist vote back from the far right.

It’s referred to as the “paradigm shift” and also underlies a current debate about whether to bring home Danish children of women who joined ISIS and are now stranded in refugee camps abroad.

Politically, this strategy has helped the Social Democrats. But Bendixen says it’s also putting Denmark on a cliff’s edge when it comes to international humanitarian law.

“They’re trying to find out where is the limit, actually,” she says. “They’re stepping as close to the limit or a little bit across it to see ‘how far can we go?'”

But even as organizations like Amnesty International and the United Nations criticize Denmark’s stance on refugees, Bendixen says international guidelines on repatriation are open to interpretation, making the government’s policy hard to challenge.

The irony is that because Denmark has not resumed diplomatic relations with Syria, rejected asylum seekers cannot actually be deported.

Of the 94 Syrian refugees who lost their Danish residence permits in 2020, some — like Jomaa and Alrejleh — are still under appeal. If they’re lucky, these people may be granted a more protected status and allowed to stay.

But Bendixen says some 30 people have already lost their appeals. The choice, at that point, is either to live indefinitely in a Danish deportation center, go back to Syria voluntarily — or go underground and try to start over in another European country.

When Denmark’s Integration Minister Mattias Tesfaye announced last June that the government would be reevaluating residence permits, he emphasized that Syrian refugees who choose to go back get a “bag of money” from Denmark in order to rebuild their lives in Syria.

The government will provide funds for travel costs, four years of medical coverage, plus a flat sum of about $23,000 per adult. But last year, only 137 of Denmark’s roughly 35,000 Syrian refugees took advantage of that offer — which Bendixen says speaks volumes about conditions in Syria.

When asked what will happen to his family if their appeal is denied, Jomaa sits quietly for a moment as his eyes fill with tears.

“I don’t have an answer,” he says.

He and Alrejleh have tried to protect their children from what’s happening, but it’s hard to hide the frustration.

Still, 11-year-old Aya knows she does not want to go back to Syria, which she remembers only vaguely as a place where “many people died.” Now, speaking in perfect Danish, she says that Denmark, her new home, is a good place.

Why?

“Because,” she says, “people don’t go around killing each other.”

Source: In Denmark, Fears Grow Among Syrian Asylum Seekers As Residence Permits Are Revoked

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

Senator [Woo] warns China might not free Spavor and Kovrig in Meng deal if Canada not part of effort

2021/04/13 Leave a comment

Sigh… Not wise or helpful:

An expert in Canada-Asian relations is warning a future U.S. deal to set free Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou may not lead to the immediate release of two Canadians locked up in China – particularly if Ottawa is not seen as having played a significant role in her release.

Senator Yuen Pau Woo, as facilitator of the Independent Senators Group in the Red Chamber, is the leader of the largest bloc in the Senate. Prior to his appointment to the Senate, he served as president and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada in Vancouver.

Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor were seized and locked up by Beijing in 2018 shortly after Ms. Meng was arrested at Vancouver airport on a U.S. extradition request – apparently in retaliation for the detention of the Huawei Technologies executive.

Ms. Meng is fighting extradition to the United States in court and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has rejected calls from Beijing to intervene and send her home, saying there will be no political interference in Canada’s independent judicial system. In late 2020, however, the U.S. Justice Department was reportedly in discussions on a plea agreement that would allow Ms Meng to return to China.

Mr. Woo has previously played a role in back-channel diplomacy between Canada and China and says he wants to do what he can do help bring about the release of Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor. “I am plugged into the discussions around these issues.”

He said there is a risk a future U.S. deal to free Ms. Meng could be “misinterpreted on the Chinese side as a problem that was resolved purely by D.C. and Beijing” without Canada.

“The resolution of the Meng Wanzhou issue may not, I am really sad to say, may not facilitate a resolution of the Spavor-Kovrig issue,” Mr. Woo told a Carleton University webinar last week.

“For the simple reason that if the political resolution is a bilateral one between the U.S. and China, that will effectively take Canada out of the equation and reduce our degrees of freedom to encourage the release of our two compatriots.”

Elaborating on this in a later interview, Mr. Woo said it’s very important that Canada be seen by Beijing as actively trying to bring about a resolution that would free Ms. Meng and if a U.S.-brokered deal is ever reached, that “Canada’s fingerprints will be all over” that arrangement.

“Right now the Canadian position for Meng Wanzhou is there is legal process and she has to go through it …. Give it your best shot – in terms of Madam Meng’s lawyers – and whatever happens, happens,” he said.

But, he noted, the United States has reportedly been trying to broker a solution.

“If we say that we are relying on the normal process of legal discussion to solve the Meng issue, why would the Chinese then subvert their legal process … to free the Michaels?”

Mr. Woo also said Canada, which has criticized the arrest of the two Michaels as “arbitrary detention,” must also recognize the Chinese justice system as legitimate.

“I don’t see that there can be any resolution of the dual problem of Meng Wanzhou and the two Michaels without some recognition and acknowledgment, on the part of the two governments, of the legitimacy of the justice systems of the other side,” he told the Carleton webinar.

“I am not saying we have to agree with the Chinese justice system but it would be extremely difficult for the Chinese to suddenly spring free Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig if we essentially say that … your system is totally illegitimate.”

Added Mr. Woo: That’s “going to be very difficult for the Chinese to spring them free because it would be basically recognizing that the Canadian side was right.”

Conservative Senator Leo Housakos said he was appalled by the suggestion that Canada should recognize China’s judicial system as legitimate.

He said it’s impossible to consider China’s justice system legitimate “when it can imprison you without charges, [when it’s] a system that doesn’t disclose what the charges are to you or to your attorney and is a judicial system that is done in closed-door privacy.”

Added Mr. Housakos: “It’s laughable.”

The Conservative senator said it’s important to remember that Ms. Meng is being accused of serious charges of bank fraud and the Canadian courts must deal impartially with the extradition proceedings, regardless of whether the U.S. grants a deferred prosecution agreement.

The American charge for which she was arrested in Canada is fraud – lying to a bank – which is a crime in both this country and the United States.

The U.S. alleges that Ms. Meng deceived banks including HSBC about the true nature of the relationship between Huawei and a subsidiary based in Iran, called Skycom, and that this fraud led bankers to clear hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions in violation of U.S. sanctions.

The Conservative senator noted that Mr. Woo recently refused to grant leave for his motion that would have imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Chinese officials over its brutal treatment of China’s Muslim Uyghur minority.

He noted that Mr. Woo advocated a prisoner exchange with Ms. Meng and the two Michaels as did prominent Liberals from the Jean Chrétien era, such as former justice minister Allan Rock, former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy and Eddie Goldenberg, a senior Chrétien adviser.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-senator-warns-china-might-not-free-spavor-and-kovrig-in-meng-deal-if/

Filed under foreign policy Tagged with , , ,

‘Enough is enough’: new group aims to open path for Filipino-Canadian candidates in next federal election

2021/04/13 Leave a comment

Of note. Nine ridings have 10 percent or more Filipino-Canadians (Filipino population greater than 10 percent):

Ignore Filipino-Canadian candidates at your own peril: that’s the message a new political action group is sending to federal parties, as jockeying for nomination races for the next election gets underway in earnest.

The Filipino community could be a decisive political force for whichever party manages to rally it, say two of the founders of the Filipino Canadian Political Association, a new group devoted to breaking down barriers that have left the community without representation in Parliament since 2004.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Grant Gonzales, a second-generation Filipino-Canadian in Toronto who is serving as the chief spokesperson for the group.

More than 837,000 Canadians identified as having a Filipino ethnic origin in the 2016 census, about 2.5 per cent of the population. More than 100,000 people from the Philippines have been given permanent resident status in Canada since then.

The 2016 Filipino population was bigger than the margin of victory in the last election in 37 federal ridings, including nine of the 25 most competitive races, according to an FCPA analysis of data from Statistics Canada and Elections Canada.

The group issued a press release on April 6 calling on political parties to nominate Filipino-Canadian candidates in winnable ridings ahead of the next election, which could come later this year. The data analysis was included in the release.

“Parties have attempted to activate us [in the past], but it’s always to support another candidate from a different community, not necessarily one of our own,” said Paul Saguil, another co-founder of the FCPA who is also running for the Liberal Party nomination in Brampton Centre, in an interview with The Hill Times.

“The information is there for party organizers to now think about very carefully. Knowing these demographics, why wouldn’t you run a Filipino-Canadian to activate these populations in favour of your party?” he said.

The two men founded the group along with Joseph Guiyab last fall, after the Liberal Party appointed former TV broadcaster Marci Ien as its candidate for a byelection in Toronto Centre. That appointment shut the door on an open nomination contest for would-be candidates including Mr. Saguil, who later stepped back from another nomination contest in Don Valley East when Liberal MPP Michael Coteau announced that he would be running there.

Mr. Saguil said Ms. Ien’s appointment, as well as other unsuccessful attempts by Filipino-Canadians to secure party nominations, played a role in the formation of the group. Mr. Gonzales was more explicit.

“That [appointment] drove a lot of sentiment around how difficult it is for racialized communities, especially Filipino-Canadians, to get into office,” he said. “We thought, ‘enough is enough,’ let’s start more intentionally bringing attention to these issues, this gap in representation.”

Both men said they held no ill will toward Ms. Ien, who went on to win the Toronto Centre byelection. Ms. Ien is Black, and Black Canadians are also underrepresented in Parliament: Black Canadians account for 3.5 per cent of Canada’s population, but hold only five—or 1.5 per cent—of the 338 seats in the House of Commons.

Mr. Gonzales said he wants to see the parties make it easier for Filipino-Canadians to run, whether that means making an appointment, as was the case for Ms. Ien, or just doing more to recruit Filipino candidates.

Filipino-Canadians have won seats in provincial legislatures and municipal councils in Canada, including Mable Elmore, B.C.’s first Filipino MLA. Some have secured nominations to run for federal parties, including Julius Tiangson, who ran for the Conservatives in York Centre in a byelection last year, and is running to secure the party’s nomination in that riding for the next election. Mr. Tiangson did not respond to an interview request last week.

Federal ridings contain an average of about 112,000 people. A perfectly representative House of Commons would have eight MPs from the Filipino community. There are currently none, and there has been only one in Canadian history: Rey Pagtakhan, who represented Winnipeg’s north end for the Liberals from 1988 to 2004.

“It’s the same conversation we have when we’re talking about women in politics. The number of times they need to be asked to run for office, because of the barriers, the attitudes that they face when they run for office,” said Mr. Gonzales.

“If you have a political party reaching out to you and saying, ‘we’d be interested in having you run for a nomination contest,’ well that adds a lot of confidence already to a candidate.”

In the meantime, Mr. Saguil said he wants the FCPA to be able to fill some of that void left by the parties, providing information and connections to Filipino-Canadians who are thinking about a run in politics.

The FCPA is still in its infancy as an organization, and does not yet have a network of volunteers and supporters broad enough to move votes in swing ridings on its own. It has not yet begun to raise money, and does not have paid staff.

The three founders have reached out to leaders within the community and had conversations with some people in federal politics, including Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) and Green Party Leader Annamie Paul, said Mr. Gonzales.

FCPA will have to show community can be mobilized: NDP strategist Romeo Tello

All three founders of the FCPA are Toronto residents with Liberal ties. Mr. Gonzales said they want the organization to be cross-partisan, and operate across the country.

The organization isn’t aiming to sway votes toward one party or another, said Mr. Saguil, but rather draw political parties’ attention to the Filipino community’s power in closely-contested ridings.

“There’s a lot of pride in our community. And when they see someone putting their name forward, and when they see a party actively putting someone forward because they want the support of the Filipino-Canadian community, then it’s a natural expectation that they’ll want to rally behind someone, whichever standard that they’re representing,” he said.

“If I’m thinking strategically for these ridings, and I want to make sure that there is no margin of error for the next election, why wouldn’t I be asking the party leadership, ‘Where is our Filipino-Canadian candidate who would help rally this population?’” said Mr. Saguil.

To be effective, the group will have to show parties the political power held by the Filipino community, said Romeo Tello, a Filipino-Canadian who has worked on provincial and federal campaigns for the NDP.

“It’s all around having conversations, and growing a network of people who can move to action on any given issue,” said Mr. Tello, who is not a member of the FCPA.

Many Filipino-Canadians work in manufacturing or front-line service industry jobs, said Mr. Tello. Filipino women fill many of the country’s front-line health and care-giving jobs, as nurses, personal support workers, and live-in caregivers.  Data released by the province of Manitoba show Filipino-Canadians have been infected by COVID-19 at a higher rate than the general population.

Younger generation ready to run: Saguil

Mr. Gonzales wants the FCPA to follow the path charted by other ethnic political interest groups in Canada. Jewish Canadians have long been represented by effective lobby groups such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee. Ukrainian Canadians have the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. Punjabi Sikhs have become a political force in their own right in Canada.

The Filipino communities across Canada do not have some of the advantages that organizers in those other ethnic groups have wielded so effectively. Filipino-Canadians are numerous, but spread out across the country: Winnipeg North and Winnipeg Centre are the only ridings in which Filipinos account for 20 per cent of the population or more.

The Philippines has been among the top source countries for immigrants to Canada for most of the past 20 years. Still, the community is a relatively young one, and many of those who have immigrated to Canada from the Philippines have been focused on carving out a life for themselves in a new country, said Mr. Saguil.

Running for office requires financial resources, and connections with political parties and other communities. “All of those things take literally one person’s lifetime, if not more, to accumulate,” said Mr. Saguil.

“That’s what we mean by systemic barriers in the FCPA. Other communities in Canada have had generations to accumulate what we’ll call collectively this political capital.”

The younger generation who immigrated with their parents—including Mr. Saguil—or were born in Canada are now more ready and able to step into the political fray, he said.

Mr. Saguil will face tough competition for the Liberal nomination in Brampton Centre. The riding was created as part of the 2013 electoral boundary realignment. It is currently held by Independent MP Ramesh Sangha, who was kicked out of the Liberal caucus earlier this year over remarks he made about some of his fellow Liberal MPs. Mr. Sangha won it as a Liberal candidate by double-digit margins in both the 2015 and 2019 elections. All five of Brampton’s MPs are Indo-Canadian.

Two other Liberals have started a campaign for the nomination in Brampton Centre so far: Amin Dhillon, a multimedia personality and former Miss India Worldwide Canada, and businessman Nasir Hussain.

Indo-Canadians are the most numerous ethnic group in Brampton, outnumbering Filipinos almost 10-to-one in the city. The Brampton Indo-Canadian community includes veteran political organizers and fundraisers.

Mr. Saguil said he has built a “broad coalition” of support already for his nomination bid, including volunteers and organizers from the Punjabi, Black, and Pakistani communities, and Filipino-Canadians from across the country.

If his odds of winning the nomination are long, the payoff of a victory could be great for Mr. Saguil. The last two elections suggest that the next Liberal candidate in Brampton Centre will have a good chance at winning.

Mr. Saguil is the deputy head of TD Bank’s global sanctions compliance and anti-corruption program, as well as a lawyer and a gay rights activist. MPs from under-represented communities who have impressive resumes are often good candidates for a cabinet appointment, even as political rookies. Procurement Minister Anita Anand (Oakville. Ont.), who boasts a resume a mile long, and was made Canada’s first Hindu cabinet minister shortly after winning her first election in 2019, is one recent example.

Source: ‘Enough is enough’: new group aims to open path for Filipino-Canadian candidates in next federal election

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Australia: Foreign student enrolments 210,000 lower than expected

2021/04/12 Leave a comment

Steeper drop than in Canada (92,000 fewer international students, or 28 per cent):

Australia’s universities have enrolled 210,000 fewer international students this year than expected, with the loss of AU$1.8 billion (US$1.4 billion) in income. More than 17,000 jobs have already disappeared from campuses across the higher education sector.

To put the figure in context, according to government data, there were 442,000 international student enrolments in higher education in Australia in 2019, the latest figure available.

But Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge believes Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout could pave the way to boost its intake of international students as early as the start of next year.

Tudge told a conference that Australia’s lucrative international student market could be given a much-needed boost by February 2022.

“With the vaccine rollout under way, I am increasingly hopeful that student arrivals in larger numbers will occur by semester one of next year,” Tudge said.

“We are looking forward to welcoming back international students who remain overseas, and we thank them for their patience to date.

“I hope they appreciate that we have closed the borders for a very good reason.” 

Tudge also raised the possibility of individual universities bringing international students to Australia this year if the nation’s chief health officers agreed and safe quarantine quarters were provided.

Billion-dollar market collapses

Australia’s AU$10 billion (US$7.6 billion) international student market collapsed after the federal government closed the nation’s international borders at the beginning of the pandemic.

Tudge claimed enrolments of foreign students at the end of 2020 were only down 7% on 2019, although universities estimate 140,000 students have since been stranded overseas.

Whoever is correct, the fact is that Australia has 210,000 fewer international student enrolments this year than would otherwise have been expected.

Universities Australia, the nation’s representative body, has released data showing the university sector had lost AU$1.8 billion in income from foreign students last year, with at least 17,000 jobs on campuses across the nation having disappeared.

Bringing students back

“Of course, there is still the opportunity to bring students back in small, phased pilots,” Tudge said.

“This could occur if an institution works with the state or territory government and presents a plan to us for quarantining international students.”

But he warned that university plans to bring more foreign students into the country would have to be approved by the chief health officer of each state or territory.

“There must also be quarantine space available above and beyond that presently used for returning Australians.”

Tudge has discussed various plans with state government and university leaders but to date has not received any concrete proposals.

He said he hoped the federal government would have a clearer idea later this year as to when international borders would re-open.

“We are expecting more clarity on these issues by mid-year, at which time we should be more certain on border openings,” he said.

No large numbers returning

Tudge believes it is unlikely that foreign students will be allowed to return in large numbers until 2022, although universities may be able to enrol limited numbers of students from overseas.

He admits the strong growth in onshore international student numbers in recent years was unsustainable, and universities need to rethink this business model. 

Specifically: Australia must “rethink the on-campus business model of international education, and more broadly the international education strategy for the nation as a whole”.

“By using international student fees to fund research, universities have undermined the learning experience of domestic students and failed to address skills shortages,” Tudge said.

Narrow focus on management

He noted that half of all international students were enrolled in management and commerce, which were not experiencing skills shortages in Australia.

Instead, the nation’s universities should look towards online rather than onshore education, Tudge said.

“This incredible growth has been good for our economy, but even before COVID hit, strains were appearing and the continued rate of growth of on-campus enrolments was not sustainable in my view.” 

Tudge said this was particularly true for the public universities, institutions which had “a broader mandate”. 

“Having up to 60% of a classroom with international students from just one or two other countries is not optimising the Australian student experience – or the international student experience,” he said.

“Can we use levers, including migration levers, to encourage more students to study in the areas where we know we have shortages?” he asked.

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-nl.php?story=20210409131414835

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

A new Windrush is in the making. Its victims are the most vulnerable of young people

2021/04/12 2 Comments

Of note:

Three years on, the individual tales of Windrush injustice still have the power to catch my breath. Men and women who moved to Britain as children decades ago, who found themselves banished from the UK for the remainder of their life after a holiday abroad, wrongfully arrested, detained and threatened with deportation, and denied life-saving care on the NHS. So many stories of the British state ruining black lives, but one stands out for its exquisite cruelty: that of Jay, the son of a Windrush immigrant.

Jay was born in the UK and taken into care as a baby. When he applied for a passport as a teenager he was told he did not have enough information about the status of his estranged mother. After his third unsuccessful application, the Home Office threatened to deport him to Jamaica and forced him to declare himself stateless. He was only able to secure a passport years later, after the Windrush scandal broke and his case received significant media attention.

Source: A new Windrush is in the making. Its victims are the most vulnerable of young people

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COVID-19 and essential workers at risk, some examples

2021/04/12 Leave a comment

Two classic cases, where private companies and weak government regulators have failed to protect workers from COVID-19 (largely immigrants, visible minorities or temporary workers), and the Ontario and Alberta governments only belatedly addressing risk in workplaces through vaccination of workers. Older stories, haven’t seen many updates:

Amazon Brampton Warehouse

An Amazon warehouse that was ordered to shut down last week due to a major COVID-19 outbreak is also being investigated for potential labour violations, the Ontario government said Monday.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Labour said the investigation was already underway when the local public health unit ordered thousands of workers at the Brampton, Ont., facility on Friday to isolate for two weeks,

“We continue to work closely with Peel Public Health and others to provide support, advice and enforcement as needed to ensure the health and safety of Ontario’s workers,” Harry Godfrey said in a statement.

Godfrey noted that penalties for labour violations could be as high as $1.5 million or imprisonment. He said the government would not hesitate to hold employers accountable if they fail to keep their employees safe.

Peel Region’s top doctor said the outbreak at the Amazon facility, which employs approximately 5,000 workers, began in October and has since been linked to more than 600 cases.

Dr. Lawrence Loh said nearly half of the cases were detected in the last few weeks, prompting the public health unit to issue a special order requiring the workers to self-isolate for two weeks starting March 13.

Workers were ordered to isolate until March 27 unless they’ve tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 90 days and have already completed their isolation period for that infection.

Amazon Canada said workers would be paid during the 14-day quarantine, but it disputed the data being used to support the plant closure, pointing to a round of tests that recently came back with a positivity rate of less than one per cent. It has said it plans to appeal the decision.

Peel Public Health said the closure will give the company further time to consider additional operational changes that may help prevent outbreaks in future.

The Ministry of Labour said its inspectors had visited the site 12 times and issued eight orders since March 2020.

Gagandeep Kaur, an organizer with Brampton-based Warehouse Workers Centre that advocates for workers’ rights in the sector, said conditions had been getting worse in the facility for months. She said workers “were kind of surprised” that it took so long for public health to get involved and force the shutdown.

Kaur said people reported that safety precautions like physical distancing have been impossible to maintain inside, especially as workers rushed to meet strict productivity targets.

She said workers are now concerned that they will be asked to push themselves harder once they return from quarantine.

“They are not at home right now enjoying this two week vacation,” Kaur said by phone. “They are more worried that once they are back … management might put higher targets for them to reach.”

Kaur said the pressures of the warehouse workplace, where employees’ time on floor is constantly measured and tracked, created safety issues before the pandemic. Those challenges only increased with the viral threat that also coincided with more hiring, and greater demands as more people relied on the delivery service.

She said the company should use the two-week shutdown to implement changes at the plant such as further separating work stations and reducing performance targets as workers are dealing with the added stress of the pandemic.

“Amazon must use it wisely,” she said of the shutdown. “Maybe implementing those changes inside the facility that will make the work safer so that we don’t end up with this crisis again.”

Last month, labour inspectors carried out a “blitz” operation on the warehouses and distribution centres in Peel Region – a COVID-19 hot spot with a high number of outbreaks in workplaces.

About 200 inspections took place and 26 tickets were issued, according the Ministry of Labour.

Source: https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/ontario-labour-ministry-investigating-brampton-amazon-site-ordered-to-shut-down-over-outbreak-1.5348106?cache=

Alberta Olymel meat packing

Slaughterhouses. Meat packing. Sick and dead employees. The pandemic has sharpened our vision about a lot of things.

Such as: the workers who are key to making sure Canadians have plenty of steaks, hamburger, and bacon on the menu have become about as disposable as paper plates. This became more than evident over the past month as hundreds of workers in yet another meat packing plant in Alberta became infected with COVID-19.

Three employees have died. The first to die was 35-year-old Darwin Doloque, a recent immigrant from the Philippines who was found dead in his home at the end of January. 

At that point it was clear that infection was spreading among the 1,850 women and men at the Olymel slaughterhouse and pork processing plant in Red Deer. And yet neither government nor public health officials moved to it shut down.

It was only in mid-February after public pressure from the Union of Food and Commercial Workers, which represents the employees, that Olymel management decided to shut down for two weeks. Workers were laid off without pay and advised to apply for Employment Insurance so the government could pick up the bill.

And lest you think Olymel is owned by a U.S. or Brazilian mega-meat packer, it is not. It is a division of Quebec-based Sollio Cooperative Group, Canada’s largest agriculture co-op, which last year reaped $8.1 billion in revenue. Besides being the biggest pork and poultry producer in Canada, Olymel exports to China, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Most of the workers at the Red Deer plant — midway between Calgary and Edmonton — are recent immigrants, refugees, or temporary foreign workers. They come from Sudan, Guatemala, the Philippines, Mexico, and Dominican Republic and usually don’t speak English. 

It’s the same story at most large slaughterhouses/meat packing plants because it is bloody, back breaking, and dangerous work that only people with limited employment options are willing to take. 

For most of us working at a job site where 45,000 hogs a week are killed is beyond imagination. But that is par for the course at the Olymel plant. Every week, the pigs just keep coming from hog farming operations in Alberta and Saskatchewan, which need to keep those pigs moving if they are to be profitable. They do not want processing plants to close down because it hits them right on the bottom line. 

So workers are pushed to keep working even after a quarter of them have been infected with the coronavirus; even though the majority of those workers have jobs outside the plant and could spread the virus in the larger community.

The COVID-19 outbreak at Olymel and the subsequent inaction on the part of government, public health officials, and plant management could be better understood if we were in the beginning stages of the pandemic and those in charge were still trying to figure out what to do about workplace outbreaks.

But this is hardly the case. In Alberta alone during the past year we have seen serious outbreaks in eight meat packing facilities.

In April, the Cargill plant in High River (owned by a U.S. mega-meat packer) had a total of 950 cases among 2,000 employees, the worst COVID-19 outbreak in Canada. Three people died, dozens were hospitalized. 

In the U.S, 50,000 meat packing workers were infected, and about 250 died. Communities around those facilities had some of the highest infection rates in the country. 

This was all known long before the outbreak at Olymel. The U.S Congress has launched an investigation into how the meat packing industry responded to the pandemic.

In Alberta, both Rachel Notley, leader of the official opposition, and the Alberta Federation of Labour have called for a public inquiry into the Alberta government’s handling of the outbreak at the Olymel plant. 

A public inquiry takes time but given the repeated performance of government agencies and meat packing companies during the pandemic we need to know more about why so many people became infected and died so it won’t happen again. 

In the meantime Olymel is re-opening the Red Deer plant and calling back workers. Bacon anyone?

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/03/08/alberta-is-still-not-protecting-its-meat-packing-workers.html 

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Lisée: Éloge de la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre

2021/04/10 Leave a comment

A contrarian view to what appears to be the general consensus in English Canada in favour of increased immigration:

On l’entend déjà, la musique de la pénurie de main-d’œuvre, avant même que la pandémie nous tourne le dos. On l’entend dans les questions posées par la cheffe libérale. Dans les déclarations patronales, chez quelques économistes et chroniqueurs. Il manque tellement de main-d’œuvre dans tellement de secteurs, va le refrain, qu’il faut de suite doubler, tripler, quadrupler l’immigration.

Si seulement on faisait venir 30 000 infirmières, on réglerait notre problème ! Mais 30 000, réparties sur le territoire, c’est l’équivalent de la population de Chambly. Les enfants de ces infirmières vont exacerber la pénurie d’enseignants, non ? Qu’à cela ne tienne. Faisons venir 30 000 enseignants. Mais ne devra-t-on pas bâtir des maisons pour loger ces 60 000 nouveaux Québécois ? Ce qui va accroître la pénurie dans la construction. D’accord pour ajouter 30 000 ouvriers (ne pas oublier les soudeurs). Mais on a maintenant dépassé la population totale de Repentigny. On vient d’aggraver la pénurie dans le secteur manufacturier, dans les technologies de l’information, dans les transports. Bon, je pense que vous saisissez. Une méta-étude (Longhi et coll.) montre qu’il faut 49 salariés pour répondre aux besoins générés par 50 nouveaux citoyens. Il en reste un, un seul, pour pourvoir un emploi jusque-là vacant. Ma calculatrice est formelle : en suivant cette équation, pour pourvoir par l’immigration les 150 000 postes vacants au Québec, il faudrait 7,5 millions d’immigrants.

Qu’on me permette de citer un de nos plus brillants économistes, Carlos Leitão : « Pour la pénurie de main-d’œuvre, la solution numéro un reste la formation de la main-d’œuvre. On peut toujours aller chercher des immigrants dans des domaines spécialisés, mais l’immigration ne réglera pas la pénurie de main-d’œuvre de façon générale. » Je note qu’il n’a pas répété cette vérité scientifique depuis qu’il a rejoint le Parti libéral du Québec.

L’immigration est un excellent moyen pour faire grossir l’économie en soi (mais pas pour enrichir les citoyens en moyenne), pour tirer légèrement les salaires vers le bas (un grand objectif patronal), pour montrer de la solidarité internationale. Dans une société dont la langue est en déclin rapide, une immigration de langue étrangère est un accélérateur, plutôt qu’un frein, de la chute.

Ce dont on parle trop peu, par contre, ce sont les avantages de la pénurie de main-d’œuvre.

Les salaires montent. Lorsque le chômage était à 8 %, en 2010, l’augmentation réelle des salaires ne fut que d’un demi pour cent. Dix ans plus tard, avec un chômage à 5 %, les salaires réels ont crû de 5 %, un record. La pénurie de main-d’œuvre renverse le rapport de force patrons-salariés en faveur des salariés. Une bonne chose.

N’avez-vous pas été frappés par le fait que plus de 10 000 Québécois ont répondu présents à une offre d’aller changer des couches d’aînés lorsqu’on leur a promis 26 $ l’heure ?

La pauvreté recule. En 2010 il y avait 365 000 adultes prestataires de l’aide sociale. Dix ans plus tard, ils ne sont plus que 130 000, une réduction sensationnelle des deux tiers, et dont seulement 83 000 ne présentant aucune contrainte à l’emploi. Du jamais vu. Et une preuve que lorsque les emplois sont disponibles et que les salaires montent, les assistés sociaux ne demandent pas mieux que d’aller au boulot. Cela a des conséquences sur la sortie de la pauvreté. Le nombre de Québécois à faible revenu (mesure du panier de consommation) est passé de 975 000 en 2006 à 705 000 en 2016, une réduction de près de 30 %.

La pénurie contribue à un cercle vertueux : moins de pauvreté signifie moins de problèmes de santé générés par cette pauvreté, moins de coûts sociaux, plus d’activité économique, plus de rentrées fiscales pour l’État, donc pour les dépenses publiques.

La discrimination à l’embauche recule. Il y a une décennie, le taux de chômage des immigrants arrivés chez nous depuis 5 à 10 ans était près du double (15 %) de celui des natifs québécois (8 %). Désormais à 6,1 %, ce taux s’approche de celui des natifs, à 4,5 %. C’est facile à comprendre : lorsqu’il y a des Mohammed et des Jean-Jacques dans les CV examinés, c’est Jean-Jacques qui gagne. Mais s’il n’y a plus que des Mohammed, le plus obtus des employeurs devra finir par l’appeler. Merci qui ? Merci la pénurie !

Elle fait aussi en sorte que les employeurs se tournent plus volontiers vers des salariés en situation de handicap, vers les programmes d’insertion de décrocheurs. Aucune politique d’insertion sociale n’est plus efficace que la pénurie. Aucune.

La productivité augmente. La clé de notre richesse collective repose sur notre capacité à augmenter la productivité par heure travaillée. Depuis des décennies, Québec cherche avec un succès mitigé à pousser nos PME à innover, à améliorer l’outil de travail, à hausser le niveau de formation des salariés. Longtemps, l’existence d’une main-d’œuvre abondante et à bon marché a nourri chez ces employeurs une désolante paresse. Mais s’il manque désormais d’employés pour répondre aux commandes, que font-ils ? Ils doivent se résoudre à automatiser, à robotiser, à former les salariés pour opérer ces technologies. Et puisque ces nouveaux procédés sont plus verts, ils contribuent à notre combat contre le réchauffement climatique. Aucune politique publique d’innovation n’est aussi efficace que la pénurie de main-d’œuvre.

On rattrape l’Ontario. C’est l’obsession de François Legault. Faire en sorte que le salaire moyen québécois brut rejoigne l’ontarien. (Je dis « brut », car, ajusté au coût de la vie, notre salaire moyen net a rattrapé l’ontarien depuis un bon bout de temps.) Ses amis patrons l’implorent d’ouvrir les vannes de l’immigration. car il leur manque un ingénieur ici, un soudeur là, des informaticiens un peu partout. Il doit leur résister. C’est la pénurie qui pousse tous les salaires vers le haut. On ne s’attend pas à ce que le premier ministre l’admette. Seulement à ce qu’il le sache et qu’il agisse en conséquence. Pour l’enrichissement, contre la pauvreté et la discrimination, la pénurie est son meilleur allié.

Source: Éloge de la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre

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CDC Director Designates Racism a ‘Serious Public Health Threat’

2021/04/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

Racism is a scourge in American society. It’s also a serious public health threat, according to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a statement released Thursday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky pointed to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color, as seen in case numbers, deaths and social consequence.

“Yet, the disparities seen over the past year were not a result of COVID-19,” Walensky said. “Instead, the pandemic illuminated inequities that have existed for generations and revealed for all of America a known, but often unaddressed, epidemic impacting public health: racism.”

As Pandemic Deaths Add Up, Racial Disparities Persist — And In Some Cases Worsen

 

 

“What we know is this: racism is a serious public health threat that directly affects the well-being of millions of Americans,” she added. “As a result, it affects the health of our entire nation. Racism is not just the discrimination against one group based on the color of their skin or their race or ethnicity, but the structural barriers that impact racial and ethnic groups differently to influence where a person lives, where they work, where their children play, and where they worship and gather in community. These social determinants of health have life-long negative effects on the mental and physical health of individuals in communities of color.”

The result, she says, are stark health disparities that have mounted over generations.

So what does it mean for the agency? Walensky has charged all of the offices and centers under the CDC to develop interventions and measurable health outcomes in the next year, addressing racism in their respective areas. And she’s made clear that is a priority for the entire CDC.

The CDC also launched a new web portal, Racism and Health, that’s designed to be a hub for public and scientific information and discourse on the subject.

The site notes that racism, in both its structural and interpersonal forms, has a negative effect on mental and physical health.

And Walensky isn’t trying to avoid hard conversations.

“The word racism is intentional in this [initiative] for the CDC,” she told Timemagazine. “This is not just about the color of your skin but also about where you live, where you work, where your children play, where you pray, how you get to work, the jobs you have. All of these things feed into people’s health and their opportunities for health.”

The CDC committed to continuing to study how racism affects health, and propose and implement solutions accordingly. It will expand its investments in minority and other disproportionately affected communities to create “durable infrastructure” to address disparities.

“It has to be baked into the cake,” Walensky told Time. “It’s got to be part of what everybody is doing.”

Source: CDC Director Designates Racism a ‘Serious Public Health Threat’

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@ASemotiuk: How To Fund Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Using Immigration

2021/04/10 Leave a comment

Benefits of investor immigration and citizenship-by-investment schemes over stated along with risks of corruption. Great benefits for immigration lawyers and consultants, however:

Recently, President Biden unveiled a $ 2 trillion infrastructure plan to fix roads and bridges, while boosting research and tackling climate change. Calling it a “once-in-a-generation investment in America,” he introduced the plan to address the inequalities exposed by the pandemic and to heal America’s economy from the bottom up. More recently, Biden specified how he would raise the money through higher corporate taxation. But could there be a better more creative way?

How Much Is That?

If you are anything like me, you’re not entirely sure just how many zeros there are in a trillion. I had to look it up, and it’s 12 zeros. In other words, President Biden’s infrastructure proposal would cost exactly $ 2,300,000,000,000. It has been estimated that $1 trillion worth of one dollar bills stacked one on top of the other would measure 109,220 kilometres. Put another way, if you stacked up all the dollars in President Biden’s plan one on top of another, they would reach half way to the moon. That’s a lot of money. While Biden has set out his corporate tax proposal as a way to fund it, he has indicated he is open to suggestions on this theme.

Raising Taxes Has Been Proposed

It seems to me there are basically three ways America could pay for President Biden’s plan. The first way is to raise taxes. Biden argues that for those taxpayers making less than $ 400,000 per year there would be no tax increase. Instead he has proposed to raise taxes on large corporations and high net worth individuals. It is clear that Republicans want none of that and will fight tooth and nail to oppose the plan. Let’s face it, rich people and big corporations just don’t want to pay for this proposed program. With the Democratic majority in both Houses, Biden may be able to shove the plan down their throats. Or he may not. That drama will play out in the weeks ahead. But let’s keep an open mind about this.

A Second Alternative

A second alternative would be to go further in debt, increasing the federal debt from its current $ 21 trillion to $ 23 trillion. This would be like drawing down even more debt on a federal credit card that has long ago already exceeded its limit. So far, with interest rates at record lows, going into debt has been workable. The challenge there is the day when holders of American dollars lose confidence in them. That’s when interest rates will start rising and the federal debt will become unmanageable. Until then though, just printing more money could work. This would be the lazy way out of the challenge, seemingly the least painful way immediately, but likely to cause a terrible hangover down the road.

But there is a third way. And this fits with the already mentioned Biden’s willingness to consider alternatives.

Paying For Infrastructure Repairs Using Immigration

The third way would be to adapt an investor immigration program to pay for at least some of the infrastructure plan. The current U.S. EB-5 investor immigration regional center program includes a component in which foreign investors invest $ 900,000 for a period of five years on a project approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). Each application must create at least 10 new jobs and enables such an investor and his or her family to immigrate to the United States permanently. Out of about one million applicants who immigrate to the United States each year, current allowances allocate only 10,000 slots to such foreign investors and their family members. However, it would not be hard to imagine how this program could be altered to help pay for Biden’s plan over a period of time. That would mean we would get the same result Biden proposes, without it costing Americans as much since the cost would be paid by new foreign investment brought into the country.

Suppose, for example, we agreed to increase the number of investor-related visas coming into the United States per year from the current 10,000, to say 100,000. Assuming each family on average has four persons, that would mean there would be 25,000 investors coming into the country under such a scenario. If each investor invested $ 900,000 and created 10 new jobs as required under the EB-5 program, that would mean the EB-5 program could generate $ 22.5 billion in revenues and 250,000 new jobs per year.

To be more exact, Biden’s plan calls for over $ 2 trillion in investment to be spent and paid for over 15 years. Using that as a measuring stick and assuming the $ 900,000 per investor would remain the same under the USCIS program, it would mean we would aim to attract some 375,000 investors to the United States over 15 years and earn just under $ 340 billion. However, if you spread this effort out over say a 40-year time frame, such an effort would exceed $ 1 trillion in investments.

Long Term Thinking

There are about 15 million millionaires in the world today outside of North America. This plan would call on attracting less than 10% of them to America over the next 40 years. That may not be easy, but maybe it could be done. The key thing is that such a program would generate 10 million new jobs for Americans. Assuming such a program was ongoing, the amounts invested would be repaid with ongoing investment over time. Further, this doesn’t even consider what other investments each such family would make in America as they buy houses, send kids to schools and spend money on consumer goods.

Maybe these assumptions about the EB-5 program are too unrealistic or miss the mark in some way. Even so, they do illustrate how the EB-5 program could help defray at least some of the costs of Biden’s proposal if used in combination with other ways of funding it. By tinkering with the various options available, a package may be created that will impose less of a burden on U.S. taxpayers and spur the economic recovery at the same time. It is worthwhile to consider these alternatives in this context.

Source: How To Fund Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Using Immigration

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

Antigua PM accuses US of trying to kill Caribbean citizenship by investment programs

2021/04/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister, Gaston Browne, is accusing the United States of America of trying to “kill” the Citizenship by Investment Programs (CIP) in the Caribbean.

Browne said to listeners on his weekly radio program Saturday gone, that “It seems as though they don’t want us to operate the CIP so they want to kill it”

“They attacked St Kitts and Dominica too. And they do that so often I don’t even know what to say. But anytime they kill it, countries like Dominica and St Kitts, their economies will be decimated and they will plunge tens of thousands of people e in poverty and then you end up with so many social ills,” said

His comment comes on the heels of a report last week, where the US government cited the CIP in three Caribbean countries for “lack of transparency”.

In the ‘Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government,’ section, the 2020 report identifies the CIP programs in Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica and St. Kitts & Nevis as citizen concerns on oversight and corruption due to a lack of openness.

In Dominica, the US report pointed to local media and opposition leadership, who continue to raise allegations of corruption within the government, including in the Citizenship by Investment program and pointed to the fact that while the law provides criminal penalties for corruption by officials … the government implemented the law inconsistently.”

And in St. Kitts & Nevis, the US report pointed to media and private citizens reporting on government corruption “occasionally” even as citizens “expressed concern about the lack of financial oversight of revenues generated by the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) program.”

Browne said instead of using information to disparage these countries, the United States should instead work with these small island developing states.

“Let us work together and strengthen the relations with the United States, Dominica, St Kitts…. I mean trying to use this information to disparage us is unhelpful. If it was truthful, I would understand,” he said.

The CIP Programs in the Eastern Caribbean countries have been a source of continued criticism by the US and many nationals locally who question the use of “donation” funds that are part of the attractive offer for a second passport in these jurisdictions and visa free travel to between 152 and 162 countries.

Five Caribbean countries offer the CIP programs but neither Grenada nor St. Lucia were cited for lack of transparency in the report.

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

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