Fears that international student intake will keep falling

2021/04/05 Leave a comment

Not much new but nevertheless worth reading:

Canada suffered a year-on-year drop of between 20% and 30% in international student enrolment between the 2019-20 academic year and the 2020-21 academic year because of the COVID crisis.

The absence of 65,000 international students is already affecting local economies, university budgets and research in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

But university and college administrators, and non-governmental organisations involved with bringing international students to Canada are concerned that travel rules introduced in February 2021 to restrict the spread of COVID-19 will further depress the numbers of international students coming to Canada, both this spring and in September.  

Since this February, international flights to Canada can land only in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, and travellers have been required to be quarantined at designated hotels.  

According to Denise Amyot, president and CEO of Colleges and Institutes Canada, these new regulations have disproportionately impacted colleges and universities in smaller cities and rural and remote areas because students must serve the entirety of their quarantine at the government-approved hotels.  

“There’s no designated airport in Atlantic Canada,” she notes. International students destined for universities in this region must first quarantine in a hotel at one of the hubs at a cost of CA$2,000 (US$1,600).

“This is very costly, especially for an international student,” Amyot says.  

In addition, once the student travels to their destination university in, say, Halifax, Nova Scotia, or Quebec City, they will have to quarantine again. While the final tallies are not in, Amyot says, because of these two layers of quarantine, we are seeing a large number of deferrals for the spring, summer and upcoming fall intakes.

International students whose universities are near one of the designated airports must quarantine in the government-approved hotels for at least three days, the period it normally takes to receive COVID-19 test results. If they test negative, and if their school has a plan approved by the local health authority and the federal government, the student can be taken to a quarantine centre on his or her school’s campus.  

In an effort to lessen the financial burden on international students, the University of Waterloo in southwestern Ontario picks up the cost for days four through to 14 for students who quarantine on its main campus in Kitchener, Ontario. 

“The cost,” says University of Waterloo Associate Vice Provost Chris Read, “is about CA$2,000 and includes transportation from the airport, accommodation and food”. This programme explains why the university’s year-over-year enrolment of international students has remained stable at 8,861 in 2020-21 compared with 8,897 the year before. 

Concerns about international students’ mental health has prompted the University of Calgary to include a Zoom-based buddy system in its quarantine programme. The buddies are not counsellors, says Dean and Vice-Provost Dr Robin Yates, but are peer volunteers, “a friendly face who will keep them company”.

For its part, in addition to providing quarantine space in its dormitories, the University of Toronto has established a CA$9.1 million (US$7.2 million) fund to help international students pay for the period of time they have to quarantine in a hotel.

The financial impact resulting from the absence of international students is being felt across the country and is affecting the bottom line of universities and colleges, according to Professor Robert Falconer of the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.

“Across the country, with a few exceptions, universities are relying more and more on international students as a primary source of revenue. British Columbia is most exposed with over 50% of its tuition revenue coming from international students,” he says. 

The differential rates charged to international students varies, but, Falconer told University World News, “it is quite significant”. At Falconer’s university, tuition and fees for international students in the sciences is CA$8,000 (US$6,400) a year, while it is CA$3,000 for domestic students. 

The figure is even greater at the University of Waterloo. Tuition fees for domestic students enrolled in graduate studies in architecture are CA$10,900 as compared to CA$59,700 (US$47,600) for international students. In the faculties of applied health sciences and art, the tuition fees for each group are CA$7,700 and CA$40,900, respectively. 

According to Yates of the University of Calgary, the differential paid by international students is vital. “It helps institutions to be able to offer programmes, especially smaller institutions, that they would not have been able to afford otherwise, either because the schools did not have enough money or enough domestic students to be able to offer that programme.”

Marco Mendicino, minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, could not have been blunter. “If we didn’t have international students, we would have a gaping hole in our economy. They contribute CA$21 billion [US$16.7 billion] to the Canadian economy as compared to CA$19 billion contributed by the automotive industry,” he says.

“This contribution might not be noticed in larger centres, but in small university towns like the University of Lethbridge [Alberta] or in Thunder Bay [Lakehead University], Ontario, they have a large impact through renting homes and buying goods and services,” says Falconer. 

Threat to STEM programmes

Falconer, Yates, Amyot and the other experts University World Newsinterviewed were especially concerned with how the decline in the number of international graduate students threatens Canada’s STEM programmes.

Of the 2,000 international graduate students at the University of Calgary, some 400 have requested deferrals and have remained in their home countries.  

According to Yates, about 200 are studying remotely. In his immunology lab, Yates told University World News that while certain tasks, such as data analysis, can be done remotely for a month or two, at some point you have to go back into the lab to generate more data.  

“Graduate students comprise a significant part of the workforce doing meaningful research that is pushing the research agenda forward for Canada. Anywhere between 20% and 80% of any given research group is composed of graduate students and on average a little more than one third of these students are international graduate students.”

Yates’ University of Calgary colleague, Falconer, is concerned that the brain drain in the STEM fields will hobble Canada’s post-COVID recovery. 

“The OECD countries are considering what a post-COVID industrial policy, and research and development policy looks like. We have to consider [whether without these students] we even have the staffing and personnel industrial base to facilitate a post-COVID industrial economy?” he asks.

To the question, especially in a pandemic, of why Canadian taxpayers should be funding graduate schools that educate international students, Yates answered: “To drive research agendas and move our research forward, we need the best and brightest from across the globe. The taxpayers deserve when they spend millions of dollars on research that that money be spent in the best way possible. And that is to get the best people here into Canada.”

It is important, Yates adds, that people understand that the pure or applied research that international graduate students undertake in labs like his undergirded the creation of the vaccines against COVID-19.  

“The PhDs that come out of these programmes are making and designing these vaccines. The workforces that are in AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer are sourced from graduate programmes and these include international students,” he says.

Corridor kept open

Minister Mendicino, Falconer and Amyot each emphasised that unlike similar countries such as Australia, Canada has kept the corridor for international students open because of the long-term importance of international students to the country.  

At present 25% of Canadians are older than 65, which means that for each retired person there are fewer than three working and paying into the social insurance system and taxes.  

“Canada needs immigration. We need people to decide to live here because we have such a low [1.5] fertility rate,” says Amyot.  

“Despite the challenges of the pandemic,” says Mendicino, “we have kept the international programme open, and we have improved it.” 

The four improvements, Mendicino explained to University World News, amount to a ladder, at the top of which international students can apply for permanent residency and, ultimately, citizenship.  

The first improvement allowed international students to start their studies online in their home country. 

The second changed the international students’ work permits to give them the right to work in fields other than their course of study. 

The third was keeping open the corridor, which required planning with universities and colleges, and, negotiating agreements with the provinces; this last always a fraught activity in the fractious Canadian federation. 

The fourth improvement provides additional work permit flexibility to postgraduate students so as not to penalise them for starting their programmes online. Once they have graduated and found jobs, thousands of (former) international students apply for permanent residency.

“What I see as minister is an opportunity to broaden and accelerate the pathways that not only allow international students to come and study but also to stay in Canada and build the next chapter of their lives in Canada,” says Mendicino, who himself is the child of Italian immigrants.

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-nl.php?story=20210402091353306

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UK: Ten previous inquiries expose the real problem with the Race Commission’s findings

2021/04/05 Leave a comment

As all too often happens with inquiries:

Amid Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd, Boris Johnson promised a Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. Announced in a Telegraph column(where else?) about Winston Churchill (who else?), it was clear even then that this was a weak response to a widespread problem.

The Commission’s remit was vague (with its sights on “inequality across the UK, not just that affecting the BAME community”), and those eventually charged with it had previously expressed reservations about the existence of institutional racism.

Yet the main problem was that previous inquiries, many set up by past governments using official data, had already exposed the racial disparities in the areas under the Commission’s remit: education, work, policing and health.

The information is already out there, but the recommendations from those reports have not been taken up. Last June, when the Commission was announced, I counted 375 recommendations to the government in ten different inquiries – from the 1999 Macpherson Report following the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, to 2020’s Lessons Learned review into the Windrush scandal – which are yet to be implemented.

As my colleague Ailbhe Rea points out, the latest Commission’s findings were carefully briefed ahead of publication to achieve headlines suggesting institutional racism is “no longer” a problem in Britain.

The pre-publication stories focused on celebrations of Britain as a “beacon” of successful multiculturalism to Europe and the rest of the world, scepticism of the use of “institutional racism”, and success stories among certain ethnic minority pupils in educational attainment.

While there are clearly nuggets for the “war on woke” brigade to get their teeth into – the description of slavery as “not only being about profit and suffering” springs to mind – there are also recommendations that echo findings of aforementioned reviews.

For example, the 2017 Lammy Review into discrimination in the criminal justice systemanalysed disproportionate use of stop and search on black people, citing Northamptonshire Police Force’s enhanced scrutiny of the practice as a favourable case study. The Race Commission recommends greater scrutiny of the practice through body-worn video footage, with officers who have their cameras off providing a written reason to the individual who was stopped as well as their supervising officer (and “misconduct procedures” for serious instances of misuse).

Many of the Race Commission’s recommendations contradict its own headlines and implicitly accept the existence of systemic racism: the application of the Equality Act to potentially discriminatory “algorithmic decision-making” is just one example.

There are also proposals that run against the “war on woke” narrative. For example, the development of a pilot to divert offences of low-level Class B drug possession – which disproportionately affect ethnic minority young people – into public health solutions.

Yet the evidence-heavy, action-light history of reviews into British racism suggests these may be patchily enacted or left to exist only on paper – forever buried beneath headline-hungry right-wing virtue signalling.

Anoosh Chakelian is the New Statesman’s Britain editor.

Source: Ten previous inquiries expose the real problem with the Race Commission’s findings

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New curriculum deepens old political divide in Alberta

2021/04/05 Leave a comment

Brings back memories of working on Discover Canada, the citizenship study guide introduced by former immigration and citizenship minister Kenney (my book, https://wordpress.com/page/multiculturalmeanderings.com/2507, has a chapter covering that):

When Alberta’s NDP government was still in power, the United Conservative Party campaigned on the idea that its political rival was trying to smuggle politics into Alberta classrooms. Once in office, UCP Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said her own government’s plans for a sweeping curriculum revamp would be about getting away from any “ideological bent.”

But when everyone got the first official look at the UCP’s draft kindergarten-to-Grade 6 curriculum this week, it became clear that the governing party’s political stamp is on its own strategy. In social studies, in particular, it’s a prescriptive, details-heavy document with a take on history that’s not an easy sell to many parents, or the people who teach the stuff.

The document asks Grade 3 students – kids aged 8 or 9 – to explain items many grownups struggle with, including the clauses of Magna Carta, the First Nations’ claim to land beyond the settled area of New France and “why Alberta is a leading resource-producing region.”

There was never a chance that a large-scale blueprint that outlines the lessons that will mould young minds would be anything but political. Education is a fraught issue everywhere, but it’s especially so in the polarized landscape that is Alberta politics. Here, there’s no consensus on where the oil and gas-focused economy needs to go, and where it feels like the NDP and UCP are locked in a perpetual, election-like battle.

The government says the draft K-6 curriculum brings a renewed focus to literacy, numeracy, citizenship and practical skills. Everyone seems to agree that the addition of financial skills, computer coding and sexual consent are good things.

The government is asking for feedback from the public but intends to test the curriculum in some classrooms this fall, and all students are expected to be learning it in the 2022-23 school year. The quick turnaround for reimagining the curriculum is in step with the government’s focus on fulfilling campaign commitments, even in the midst of a pandemic.

Alberta has long had a strong, well-regarded public-education system with high student test scores in reading, math and science, compared with global peers. Ms. LaGrange, however, also notes that some parts of the curriculum are decades old, and raw scores are either flat or seeing a decline.

“This is actually very ambitious – to change all of the curriculum at one time,” said Ms. LaGrange in an interview this week with The Globe and Mail.

But already, the Métis Nation of Alberta has called for a redo. Edmonton Public Schools – which counts more than 100,000 students of all grades on its rolls – said Thursday that it will not participate in a pilot run of the draft elementary curriculum this fall. The decision is based on worries about bringing in a new program during the pandemic. But there’s also high public concern as to whether the curriculum is age-appropriate, whether it properly addresses the issues of residential schools and reconciliation, and whether an “us-versus-them mentality” is embedded in the document.

Elk Island Public Schools is also out, and Edmonton Catholic Schools has saidit “will not be committing to piloting the curriculum.”

All subjects are under intense scrutiny but social studies appears to be the major sticking point. Some parents and critics say the curriculum is far too dense for young students, mishandles issues of race and leaves out LGBTQ issues, is too American- and European-centric, or is focused on the three major Abrahamic religions.

There are seemingly gratuitous partisan jabs, like in Grade 6, where the curriculum notes that “the United States Congress, controlled by the Democratic party, ruled in the Fugitive Slave Act that escaped slaves must be returned to their owners.”

NDP critic Sarah Hoffman’s blunt assessment is “this is a mess of a curriculum.”

But the UCP is responding, in part, to broader concerns about the education system – which Ms. LaGrange notes helped her party win the 2019 election. A key part of this is what she has described as the political biases of some individual teachers.

Last year, Ms. LaGrange referred to an excerpt from an exam that she said was from a Grade 10 class in Calgary. She argued that it was an attack on the province’s responsible energy sector. A multiple-choice question asked students to identify “one of the valid arguments against oil sands development” being the destruction of tracts of forest.

“My main concern has always been to ensure that our curriculum is taught without bias,” the Education Minister said the interview. “And the fact that the new draft curriculum is really based on factual content – that will really leave little room for bias in our classrooms.”

But the other side of this argument is that the ability of teachers to adapt to circumstances is diminished. “The new curriculum turns education into a checklist and rote memorization,” said Alberta Party Leader Jacquie Fenske.

And a second, related theme for the UCP is that current teaching now is so focused on the many errors of history, and injustices, that it fails to note the accomplishments of modern civilization, in Alberta and elsewhere. Premier Jason Kenney says it’s possible to face up to historical racism, for instance, “while also teaching how we have increasingly managed to overcome those things, and how we’ve created this incredibly diverse, pluralistic society.”

This part of the revamp is very on-brand for the UCP. Part of it, however, feels incongruous in a week when Mr. Kenney talked about “hitting our stride in diversification.”

An overly political remaking of Alberta’s now-strong school system is galvanizing parent groups who are against the changes. A big fight over the base curriculum for the youngest kids is not only bad for the province, it could make potential newcomers – and even the companies and investors Mr. Kenney’s government has spent two years trying to entice – less enthusiastic about coming to the province.

Politics will be part of any new curriculum. But Mr. Kenney’s UCP is, as often, in danger of letting politics take over.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-new-curriculum-deepens-old-political-divide-in-alberta/

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#Citizenship applications, new citizens and Permanent Residents: 2020 Update

2021/04/05 Leave a comment

IRCC kindly provided me with the 2020 citizenship application monthly data (not available on opendata), allowing me to update one of my standard charts, showing the dramatic declines in 2020:

Annual decline 2020 compared to 2019:

  • Applications: 26.5 percent
  • New Citizens: 56.8 percent
  • Permanent Residents: 45.7 percent

Surprised by the relatively small decline in applications compared to new citizens, suggesting that IRCC may be developing a backlog as has happened in the past.

As I have noted in the past, the number of applications and new citizens fluctuates widely compared to the more stable trajectory of new Permanent Residents, reflecting policy changes in terms of applications and resource and management issues in the case of new citizens.

Historically, this has been met by injections of funding to clear backlogs (often near to elections!) and I understand that the 2014-15 increase in citizenship fees (from $200 to $630 for adults) may have been a way to pay for increased funding.

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AOC Expertly Breaks Down Why Words About Immigration Matter

2021/04/02 Leave a comment

Interesting reframing of the increase in asylum seekers at the Southern border:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) gave a compelling argument on immigration policy on Tuesday, dismissing the term “border crisis” and instead calling it an “imperialism crisis” and a “climate crisis.”

While answering questions from her Instagram followers Tuesday night, Ocasio-Cortez responded to someone who asked, “Why are you not addressing the border crisis and the kids in cages like you used to?”

“Are you for real?” Ocasio-Cortez responded. “So often people wanna say, ‘Why aren’t you talking about the border crisis?’ Or ‘why aren’t you talking about it in this way?’ Well, we’re talking about it; they just don’t like how we’re talking about it.”

Ocasio-Cortez continued, saying it’s not a border crisis but rather, “It’s an imperialism crisis, it’s a climate crisis, it’s a trade crisis.” The current immigration system is based on the U.S. carceral system, she said, and the solution should be “rooted in foreign policy.”

Last month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that there had been an influx of people at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, overwhelming the facilities set up to house them. Psaki said factors including the pandemic creating “undue hardships,” natural disasters, and flight from violence or persecution has contributed to the rise in people.

Ocasio-Cortez attributed the United States’ outsized role in the climate crisis to the increase of natural disasters in regions including the global south, which has ultimately forced people in those regions to leave their homes.

“The U.S. has disproportionately contributed to the total amount of emissions that is causing a planetary climate crisis right now,” Ocasio-Cortez continued on Instagram. “But who is bearing the brunt of that? … It’s actually not us.”

She continued: “It’s South Asia, it’s Latin America that are gonna be experiencing the floods, wildfires and droughts in a disproportionate way, which ding ding ding, has already started a migration crisis.”

Ocasio-Cortez also denounced calling the increased number of people crossing the border a “surge,” because of the term’s militaristic and white supremacist connotations.

“This is not a surge. These are children,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And they are not insurgents. And we are not being invaded — which by the way is a white supremacist idea, philosophy. The idea that if an other is coming in the population, that this is like an invasion of who we are.”

Last week, President Joe Biden addressed immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border during his first official press conference, including children being detained for long periods of time instead of being transferred to shelters. Biden said the increase in people migrating to the U.S. in the winter months occurs every year. (While the total number of people crossing the border is relatively similar to prior years during the same period, the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border between January and February 2021 is significantly up, government data shows.)

“The reason they’re coming is that it’s the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way because of the heat in the desert, number one,” Biden said.

He proposed “putting together a bipartisan plan of over $700 million to deal with the root causes of why people are leaving” their countries. Biden also said former President Trump eliminated funding for government agencies like Health and Human Services to provide proper care for migrant families, which has led to the influx of children being detained. (NBC reported that this claim is partially true.)

Source: AOC Expertly Breaks Down Why Words About Immigration Matter

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CDC: COVID-19 Was 3rd Leading Cause Of Death In 2020, People Of Color Hit Hardest

2021/04/02 Leave a comment

More confirmation of COVID-19 racial disparities:

COVID-19 was the third-underlying cause of death in 2020 after heart disease and cancer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Wednesday.

A pair of reports published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality WeeklyReport sheds new light on the approximately 375,000 U.S. deaths attributed to COVID-19 last year, and highlights the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on communities of color — a point CDC Director Rochelle Walensky emphasized at a White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing on Wednesday.

She said deaths related to COVID-19 were higher among American Indian and Alaskan Native persons, Hispanics, Blacks and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander persons than whites. She added that “among nearly all of these ethnic and racial minority groups, the COVID-19 related deaths were more than double the death rate of non-Hispanic white persons.”

“The data should serve again as a catalyst for each of us [to] continue to do our part to drive down cases and reduce the spread of COVID-19, and get people vaccinated as soon as possible,” she said.

The reports examine data from U.S. death certificates and the National Vital Statistics System to draw conclusions about the accuracy of the country’s mortality surveillance and shifts in mortality trends.

One found that the age-adjusted death rate rose by 15.9% in 2020, its first increase in three years.

Overall death rates were highest among Black and American Indian/Alaska Native people, and higher for elderly people than younger people, according to the report. Age-adjusted death rates were higher among males than females.

COVID-19 was reported as either the underlying cause of death or a contributing cause of death for some 11.3% of U.S. fatalities, and replaced suicide as one of the top 10 leading causes of death.

Similarly, COVID-19 death rates were highest among individuals ages 85 and older, with the age-adjusted death rate higher among males than females. The COVID-19 death rate was highest among Hispanic and American Indian/ Alaska Native people.

Researchers emphasized that these death estimates are provisional, as the final annual mortality data for a given year are typically released 11 months after the year ends. Still, they said early estimates can give researchers and policymakers an early indication of changing trends and other “actionable information.”

“These data can guide public health policies and interventions aimed at reducing numbers of deaths that are directly or indirectly associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and among persons most affected, including those who are older, male, or from disproportionately affected racial/ethnic minority groups,” they added.

The other study examined 378,048 death certificates from 2020 that listed COVID-19 as a cause of death. Researchers said their findings “support the accuracy of COVID-19 mortality surveillance” using official death certificates, noting the importance of high-quality documentation and countering concerns about deaths being improperly attributed to the pandemic.

Among the death certificates reviewed, just 5.5% listed COVID-19 and no other conditions. Among those that included at least one other condition, 97% had either a co-occurring diagnosis of a “plausible chain-of-event” condition such as pneumonia or respiratory failure, a “significant contributing” condition such as hypertension or diabetes, or both.

“Continued messaging and training for professionals who complete death certificates remains important as the pandemic progresses,” researchers said. “Accurate mortality surveillance is critical for understanding the impact of variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and of COVID-19 vaccination and for guiding public health action.”

Officials at the Wednesday briefing continued to call on Americans to practice mitigation measures and do their part to keep themselves and others safe, noting that COVID-19 cases continue to rise even as the country’s vaccine rollout accelerates.

The 7-day average of new cases is just under 62,000 cases per day, Walensky said, marking a nearly 12% increase from the previous 7-day period. Hospitalizations are also up at about 4,900 admissions per day, she added, with the 7-day average of deaths remaining slightly above 900 per day.

Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at New York University who served as a COVID-19 adviser on the Biden transition team, told NPR’s Morning Edition on Wednesday that she remains concerned about the rate of new infections, even as the country has made considerable progress with its vaccination rollout.

She compared vaccines to a raincoat and an umbrella, noting they provide protection during a rainstorm but not in a hurricane

“And we’re really still in a COVID hurricane,” Gounder said. “Transmission rates are extremely high. And so even if you’ve been vaccinated, you really do need to continue to be careful, avoid crowds and wear masks in public.”

Source: CDC: COVID-19 Was 3rd Leading Cause Of Death In 2020, People Of Color Hit Hardest

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British Government’s ‘Gaslighting’ Report on Racism Says Slavery Had Some Upsides

2021/04/02 Leave a comment

Not a great headline if a government wants to demonstrate awareness and sensitivity to racism. More denial of systemic barriers and bias, including how the report was released:

Last summer, after George Floyd’s killing sparked mass anti-racism demonstrations around the globe, British Prime Minister Boris Johnsonasked a dedicated team to investigate and report back on racism in the U.K.. On Wednesday, they came back with their findings—that institutional racism no longer exists, and that the slave trade had some upsides.

The report, published by the British government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, has been branded as “gaslighting” and “an insult” by anti-racism activists. While the study went as far as admitting that Britain is not yet a “post-racial country,” it lauds the country’s race relations as “a model for other white-majority countries.”

“Put simply, we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities,” it says. “The impediments and disparities do exist, they are varied, and ironically very few of them are directly to do with racism. Too often ‘racism’ is the catch-all explanation, and can be simply implicitly accepted rather than explicitly examined.”

The report went on to say that other factors—such as geography, socio-economic background, culture, family influence, and religion—had “more significant impact on life chances than the existence of racism.”

Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Today show on Wednesday, the chairman of the commission, Dr Tony Sewell, explained his questionable findings further, saying: “No-one denies and no-one is saying racism doesn’t exist… We found anecdotal evidence of this. However, evidence of actual institutional racism? No, that wasn’t there, we didn’t find that.”

Perhaps the low point of the report is when it appears to find some benefits of the African slave trade—an atrocity in which Britain very much led the way. The government report chirpily states: “There is a new story about the Caribbean experience which speaks to the slave period not only being about profit and suffering but how culturally African people transformed themselves into a re-modelled African/Britain.”

The report also criticized anti-racism campaigners, dismissing Black Lives Matter and related demonstrations as the “idealism” of “well-intentioned young people” that risks “alienating the decent centre ground” of British politics. The commission condemned what it described as an “increasingly strident form of anti-racism thinking that seeks to explain all minority disadvantage through the prism of white discrimination.”

The report has, predictably, received an extremely bad reaction from anti-racism advocates. Rehana Azam, the national secretary of the GMB trade union, said: “Only this government could produce a report on race in the 21st century that actually gaslights Black, Asian, Minority and Ethnic people and communities. This feels like a deeply cynical report that not only ignores Black and ethnic minority workers’ worries, but is part of an election strategy to divide working class people and voters.”

David Lammy, a lawmaker for the opposition Labour Party and shadow Justice Secretary, described the report as “an insult to anybody and everybody across this country who experiences institutional racism.” He added: “Boris Johnson has just slammed the door in their faces by telling them that they’re idealists, they are wasting their time. He has let an entire generation of young white and Black British people down.”

Prof Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, said: “It’s complete nonsense. It goes in the face of all the actual existing evidence. This is not a genuine effort to understand racism in Britain. This is a PR move to pretend the problem doesn’t exist.”

To make matters worse, HuffPost reported that selected journalists were not briefed about the report in advance—including Britain’s only race correspondent, The Independent’s Nadine White. White was sent an emailshowing that the commission asked for briefings on their report on racial disparities be sent to a “tight list of journos” only.

Institutional racism in Britain has been under the spotlight in recent weeks after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s allegation that the royal family expressed concerns about how dark their baby’s skin would be. Harry said racism in the British media was a “large part” of why he left the country, adding: “Unfortunately, if the source of information is inherently corrupt or racist or biased, then that filters out to the rest of society.”

Source: British Government’s ‘Gaslighting’ Report on Racism Says Slavery Had Some Upsides

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Nicholas: La honte [history of France’s suppression of minority languages and related issues]

2021/04/02 Leave a comment

Refreshing reminder of history and its impact:

On prend rarement le temps, au Québec, de rappeler qu’il n’y a pas si longtemps que tous les Français parlent français.

C’est que l’Europe s’est développée au Moyen Âge comme un ensemble de royaumes aux frontières instables, et donc les monarques se mariaient entre eux, évoluant dans un univers culturel et linguistique à part de populations très diversifiées. Et la France ne fait pas exception. L’occitan, le catalan, le breton, le picard, l’alsacien, le basque ne sont que quelques-unes des langues autochtones de la France, parlées comme langues maternelles et souvent comme seules langues de bien des sujets de la France de l’Ancien Régime, dans l’indifférence quasi totale de la monarchie. Ce qui importait au pouvoir politique des rois qui ont administré notamment la Nouvelle-France, c’était surtout que le français soit normé et imposé comme langue de l’État et de l’administration pour supplanter le latin, et donc le pouvoir de l’Église.

C’est principalement avec la Révolution française qu’on s’est mis à s’intéresser à cette diversité linguistique, perçue alors comme un obstacle à la circulation des idées politiques républicaines et laïques. Et après la période de va-et-vient politique qu’a connue la France au XIXe siècle, la Troisième République instaure dans les années 1880 une série de lois sur l’instruction primaire obligatoire — en français — sur l’ensemble du territoire. On veut alors une république, unie et unitaire. Et avec l’industrialisation et la montée du capitalisme, la bourgeoisie dominante a avantage à créer une masse qui suit les mêmes normes, travaille de la même manière, consomme les mêmes produits et les mêmes journaux.

Dans les écoles de France, on déploie un ensemble de châtiments, souvent physiques, pour punir les enfants qui parlent leur langue maternelle. On leur enseigne finalement non seulement le français, mais aussi l’infériorité de leur culture et de leur milieu familial. En occitan, on parle de vergonha pour nommer l’effet des politiques républicaines sur la psyché populaire. La honte. C’est par la honte, et souvent par la violence envers les enfants, que le français est devenu la langue de la République. Le projet linguistique républicain est donc fondamentalement un projet disciplinaire. Il faut parler le français, le bon, le patriotique, le beau, l’exact, le supérieur, le vrai, le pur. Une liste de notions qui, faut-il le spécifier, n’ont d’assises dans aucune science du langage. Les dogmatiques les plus orthodoxes de la langue française n’ont souvent (nécessairement) aucune notion de sociolinguistique.

L’unitarisme républicain a bien sûr été amené dans les colonies françaises au même moment qu’il a été imposé en France même. On a aussi tenté, tant bien que mal, d’enseigner aux fils des potentats « indigènes » non seulement le français, mais aussi la fierté et le sentiment de supériorité qui viennent avec le rapprochement avec la norme, ainsi que la honte et le mépris de sa langue maternelle ou des variants locaux du français. Cette honte, elle laisse des traces, d’une génération à l’autre, tant en France que dans son (ex) empire.

Après des décennies de lavage de cerveau, une France transformée par cet idéal politique « redécouvre » le Québec, et sa langue qui a échappé à cette entreprise de réingénierie sociale républicaine. Et une partie des élites québécoises, à son contact, internalisent aussi cette honte et la transmettent à leur tour aux gens d’ici, au nom, paradoxalement, de la fierté nationale. Frustrés d’être l’objet des moqueries des Hexagonaux, on se moque à son tour des Saguenéens ou des gens d’Hochelaga. Des Parisiens disent aux élites montréalaises qu’elles sonnent comme le Moyen Âge, et elles, à leur tour, traitent les Acadiens, les Cajuns et les Franco-Manitobains comme des vestiges du passé.

Si l’on prend rarement le temps d’expliquer cette histoire de la langue française au Québec, c’est notamment que l’on se préoccupe, avec raison, de la place prépondérante de l’anglais en Amérique du Nord, et surtout de cet autre projet impérialiste qu’est le Régime britannique à l’origine du Canada moderne. On croit que nos insécurités linguistiques nous viennent de cette situation de minoritaires sur le continent. C’est vrai, en bonne partie. Mais il ne faut pas non plus oublier d’examiner cette francophonie, le projet politique qu’elle porte, ses effets insécurisants et sa logique disciplinaire génératrice de honte et de hiérarchie qui pèsent sur les francophones « hors norme » de tous les continents, Européens y compris.

Il faut réfléchir à la langue française en Amérique non seulement face à l’anglais, mais aussi face à elle-même, dans toute sa complexité. Qu’est-ce que cela veut dire de dénoncer les tentatives d’assimilation et de stigmatisation vécues par les enfants francophones des Amériques aux mains des Britanniques et des Américains, tout en ayant participé à des projets missionnaires visant à assimiler les enfants haïtiens, sénégalais ou innus et à stigmatiser leur langue maternelle ? Qu’est-ce que ça signifie de dénoncer le règlement 17 qui a longtemps compliqué l’enseignement du français en Ontario pendant que l’État québécois s’acharne à franciser les jeunes du Nunavik ? Qu’est-ce qui se produit quand des militants de gauche, qui militent pour l’équité et l’inclusion, s’en prennent à l’orthographe des internautes moins scolarisés qu’eux plutôt qu’à leurs idées ? Ou lorsqu’on « se donne un accent » pour faire sérieux à la télévision d’État ou à l’université ?

Dénonce-t-on les effets néfastes de l’impérialisme britannique parce qu’on est anti-impérialiste ou parce qu’on lui aurait préféré un impérialisme différent, où l’on aurait été plus dominant ? Est-on contre le mépris des Franco-Québécois ou contre le mépris tout court ? Se pencher sur ces questions, c’est s’interroger sur ce que l’on veut que notre francophonie signifie à la face du monde, et aussi sur la manière dont les francophones se traitent entre eux, et sur le rapport traversé de contradictions, d’émotions et souvent d’insécurité de chacun envers sa langue et son identité. À nous de voir, avec les francophones de partout dans le monde, ce que signifie parler français, de mettre en question ses normes et de s’approprier (enfin) sa langue

Source: La honte

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Evidence Mounts That Reducing Immigration Harms America’s Economy

2021/04/02 Leave a comment

Some useful recent studies, particularly with respect to H1-B visas and skilled workers. Less convinced by some of the general demographic arguments, similar to those made in Canada by the Century Initiative and others. Shout-out to Canadian Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, authors of the book Empty Planet, making the same broader arguments (with some of the same fallacies):

Donald Trump’s immigration policies were harmful to America’s long-term economic future. That becomes clearer as one compares the Trump administration’s actions to the projected increase in the number of immigrants under recently introduced immigration legislation. The U.S. Citizenship Act, developed by the Biden administration, would aid long-term economic growth by increasing the number of legal immigrants by 28%. In contrast, Trump administration policies would have cut legal immigration in half. The immigration policy path America chooses in the long-term will make a significant impact on economic growth and future labor force growth, of which immigrants are a vital part.

Economic growth or growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is necessary for a country’s inhabitants to improve their standard of living. “GDP growth [economic growth] is made up of growth in the workforce plus growth in labor productivity,” according to Robert S. Kaplan, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “Unless slower workforce growth is offset by improved productivity growth, U.S. GDP growth will slow.”

The Trump administration’s immigration policies harmed long-term economic growth by reducing labor force growth and potential productivity growth through restrictive policies.

High-skilled foreign nationals are important to productivity growth. Yet the Trump administration increased the denial rates of H-1B petitions, causing many long-time H-1B visa holders to leave the United States. The administration also blocked the entry of H-1B visa holders and published regulations that employers believed would make it nearly impossible for many foreign-born scientists and engineers to work in the United States.

“When we aggregate at the national level, inflows of foreign STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] workers explain between 30% and 50% of the aggregate productivity growth that took place in the United States between 1990 and 2010,” according to economists Giovanni Peri (UC, Davis), Kevin Shih (RPI) and Chad Sparber (Colgate University). Research by economist Britta Glennon found rather than saving jobs, H-1B restrictions “have the unintended consequence of encouraging firms to offshore jobs abroad.”

While the Biden-supported U.S. Citizenship Act may have a difficult time becoming law, it serves as a marker for changes to legal immigration by increasing both family and employment-based immigration. The bill would have a positive impact on labor force growth by raising immigration by 28% a year after a transition period.

“Increasing legal immigration by 28% a year would increase the average annual labor force growth in the United States by 23% over current U.S. projections, which would help economic growth and address a slower-growing U.S. workforce,” according to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP). “The average annual labor force growth could be even more than 23% compared to a scenario of no immigration increases because the Bureau of Labor Statistics currently projects the U.S. labor force will grow by 800,000 a year, and that baseline growth may be lower after 2029 without the increase in immigration contained in the bill.”

“In contrast,” the analysis continues, “if the United States continued the Trump administration’s policies that administratively reduced legal immigration by approximately 49%, average annual labor force growth would be approximately 59% lower than compared to a policy of no immigration reductions, according to an NFAP analysis. Under policies that reduced legal immigration by half, in 40 years the United States would have only about 6 million more people in the labor force than it has today. Admitting fewer immigrants results in lower economic growth because labor force growth is an important element of economic growth and immigrants play a major part in both current and future labor force growth.”

A recent National Foundation for American Policy study by Madeline Zavodny, an economics professor at the University of North Florida, shows the positive impact of immigration.

“Analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data finds international migration was the only source of population growth in rural areas as a whole during most of the 2010s,” writes Zavodny. “International migration is strongly related to employment growth in both rural and metro counties. Each additional international migrant is associated with an additional 1.2 jobs in rural counties over 2010 to 2018. The estimate for rural areas suggests that international migration adds to total employment well beyond the jobs filled by international migrants. International migrants may have a larger impact on employment because of the jobs they fill. International migrants may work in jobs that otherwise would go unfilled by local residents and thereby enable businesses to expand.”

Due to declines in fertility, immigration keeps the United States from experiencing negative population growth, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

New economic research finds that negative or falling population growth may yield harmful economic outcomes beyond slowing labor force growth. Fewer available minds may mean fewer solutions to our problems. What if the breakthrough advances in mRNA made by Katalin Karikó, an Hungarian-born immigrant to America, never happened or occurred years later because Karikó was never born? How would that have affected the development of vaccines and other potential solutions to medical problems?

In a recent paper, “The End of Economic Growth? Unintended Consequences of a Declining Population,” Charles I. Jones, a professor of economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, writes, “What happens to economic growth if population growth is negative? We show below—first in models with exogenous [external] population growth and then later in a model with endogenous (internal) fertility—that negative population growth can be particularly harmful.” He asks: “How do idea-based growth models behave when population declines?”

In sum, with fewer people, “knowledge and living standards stagnate.” Jones writes, “If knowledge were to depreciate at a constant exogenous [external] rate, it is easy to show in the simple models at the start of this paper that this would lead to declining living standards in the presence of negative population growth, an even more dire outcome.”

“We refer to this as the Empty Planet result,” writes Jones. “Economic growth stagnates as the stock of knowledge and living standards settle down to constant values.”

Immigration can prevent population decline in the United States and allow America to grow—if U.S. elected officials choose the right policies. “Among great powers, the coming population decline uniquely advantages the United States,” according to Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, authors of the book Empty Planet, the title to which Charles Jones referred. “For centuries, America has welcomed new arrivals, first from across the Atlantic, then the Pacific as well, and today from across the Rio Grande. Millions have happily plunged into the melting pot—America’s version of multiculturism—enriching both its economy and culture. Immigrants made the twentieth century the American century, and continued immigration will define the twenty-first as American as well.

“Unless. The suspicious, nativist, America First groundswell of recent years threatens to choke off the immigration tap that made America great by walling up the border between the United States and everywhere else. Under President Donald Trump, the federal government not only cracked down on illegal immigrants, it reduced legal admissions for skilled workers, a suicidal policy for the U.S. economy. If this change is permanent, if Americans out of senseless fear reject their immigrant tradition, turning their backs on the world, then the United States too will decline, in numbers and power and influence and wealth. This is the choice that every American must make: to support and open, inclusive, welcoming society, or to shut the door and wither in isolation.” It is a significant choice.

Source: Evidence Mounts That Reducing Immigration Harms America’s Economy

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Ibbitson: It’s time for Canada to focus on expanding our population

2021/04/01 Leave a comment

As regular readers will know, I am not convinced that the arguments of the Century Initiative take into account the shorter-term impact of COVID on immigrant outcomes and the longer-term impact of automation and AI in their support of vastly increased immigration.

But the range of well-known people they have mobilized in their advocacy is impressive.

Their National Scorecard on Canada’s Growth and Prosperity is yet another approach to measuring how well Canada is doing with respect to overall socio-economic outcomes.

I do find it odd that a newspaper would take such a high profile advocacy role, essentially organizing a promotional event rather than a discussion more inclusive of diverse perspectives. Preaching to the converted rather than engaging those who need to be engaged.

That being said, the idea of a white paper makes sense, but its mandate needs to take a broader perspective on immigration, citizenship and multiculturalism than just justifying increased immigration levels.

And should we not also consider how to manage an aging population, not just focussing on increasing it?

On Brian Mulroney’s watch, Canada almost tripled the number of immigrants coming to Canada each year, from fewer than 90,000 people to more than 250,000.

Now Canada’s 18th prime minister is calling on Canadians to embrace what he calls “a new national policy” that would commit this country to achieving a population of 100 million by the end of the century.

“If we are going to maintain … our internal strength and our growth and our capacity and our outside influence, we need more people – a lot more,” Mr. Mulroney said Tuesday at a forum presented by The Globe and Mail and by Century Initiative, which champions the goal of a Canada that is 100-million strong by 2100.

Increasing the population by more than 60 million people would be “an historic and challenging initiative,” Mr. Mulroney acknowledged in an interview. After all, it took more than 150 years to get Canada’s population to 38 million. More than doubling it in about half that time would require much greater political and popular will than exists today.

Hence his proposal for “a white paper which indicates the need for 100 million people by the turn of the century.”

A white paper is a document through which a government puts forward a major policy proposal. If there is sufficient support, after consultation with experts, provincial governments and the broader population, it becomes settled policy, maintained by future governments whatever their partisan stripes.

Criticism of a white paper can be more important than the white paper itself. A deeply flawed white paper in 1969 that essentially called for the assimilation of First Nations into the general population helped give birth to Indigenous activism.

Conversely, a white paper on immigration produced three years earlier, which called for the final dismantling of racial barriers to accepting newcomers, led the Pearson government to invent the points system, which rated applicants based on how well they matched what the country was looking for, regardless of race.

High levels of race-blind immigration, embraced by both Liberal and Conservative governments, gave us the Canada we live in today. But the pandemic has restricted recruitment, and once the shortfall has been made up, there remains this vital question: How many people should live here?

A white paper on population, followed by a parliamentary committee travelling across the land, would encourage discussion, build momentum and, no doubt, focus opposition, which deserves to be heard.

Ideally, both Liberals and Conservatives at the federal level would express support for a target of 100 million through votes in the House and Senate.

If so, “that would become the new objective of Canada in this area,” Mr. Mulroney said, “and all governments would be bound to strive to achieve it.”

Such a goal would push Canada ahead of Germany and France and Britain in population, and probably ahead of Japan and South Korea and Vietnam as well.

That’s because the economic insecurity generated by the pandemic has exacerbated the decades-long trend of fertility decline. Low fertility, coupled with resistance to immigration, has led to population decline in dozens of countries.

Canada’s willingness to aggressively recruit newcomers leaves us better positioned to weather the demographic storms ahead than just about any other country. Taking immigration from 300,000 a people a year to a million, along with enhanced supports for child care and parental leave, would reduce labour shortages and help pay for the health care and pension needs of older Canadians, while boosting creativity and innovation. Imagine the contribution that a Toronto that was the size of New York or London or Tokyo would make to this country and to the world.

That said, the pandemic has completely disrupted how we live and work. The patterns of the past may never return. All sorts of assumptions – about downtowns and suburbs and rural areas, about commutes – may have to be rethought.

And as fertility continues to drop, the greatest obstacle to achieving a population of 100 million might be, not internal resistance, but a shrinking pool of available immigrants.

Nonetheless, Mr. Mulroney urges us to embrace “this indispensable cause.” For him, “this is a great dream of Canada, and it requires leadership to bring it true.”

Let the discussion begin, and let it begin with a new white paper on population.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-its-time-for-canada-to-focus-on-expanding-our-population/

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