He passed his Canadian citizenship test — then came a call saying there was a problem

2021/03/13 Leave a comment

Hopefully, just teething pains of the online testing system. But why officials wouldn’t be more transparent on the extent of the problem is hard to understand and citing “program integrity reasons” is not an adequate explanation:

Yaseen Alshehadat said he carefully followed each step to proceed with his citizenship exam, scanning a photo ID and taking a selfie with his computer camera, before writing the online test in late February.

The Mississauga man was relieved when he got an email from the immigration department right away congratulating him for passing the test. Maybe now he could finally get some sleep after moving one step closer to fulfilling his dream to become a Canadian citizen.

But the next day, Alshehadat received a call from an immigration official informing him that his exam result was invalidated because the image of his OHIP card, the piece of photo ID he used for the test, did not register in the system.

“I worked 14 hours a day, and for weeks, I came home and stayed up to study the citizenship guide. It was very stressful and I had very little sleep,” said Alshehadat, whose family fled Syria in 2011 and resettled in Canada in 2016 via Jordan under a government refugee sponsorship.

“I had two dreams. My first dream was to open my own business in Canada. I did that last year. My second dream was to become a Canadian. I’m so disappointed at the news,” added the father of six, who opened Yaseen’s Shawarma in October.

Alshehadat and his wife, Ikhlas Alnaseer, applied for Canadian citizenship in November 2019 and were thrilled when they were finally invited in February to take the online test after citizenship processing had stalled due to the pandemic. The immigration department began hosting virtual citizenship ceremonies last spring but only resumed remote citizenship tests in late November.

Alshehadat took his test at 4 a.m. on Feb. 25; his wife had hers the following day. They said that’s the only time they could quietly sit for the exam in front of their daughter’s laptop. Alshehadat answered 18 of the 20 multiple-choice questions correctly and Alnaseer scored 16 — both above the passing mark of 15.

Then came the call from the immigration department that their test scores were invalidated “due to lack of ID,” even though officials had a record of the individuals in front of the screen sitting the exam. They would not accept the couple’s missing ID documents afterward but insisted Alshehadat and Alnaseer retake the test.

“Whether through applicant error, technical glitch or other reason, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) did not receive photo identification from either applicant as required prior to taking the exam,” department spokesperson Derek Abma told the Star in an email.

“Verifying applicants’ identities is essential to ensuring the security and integrity of our immigration system. This is true across all of IRCC’s processes, but especially when it comes to obtaining Canadian citizenship.”

Abma said an applicant’s identity must be confirmed at the time each requirement is being met. An official verifies the identity of the candidate by comparing faces on the identity document provided at the time of the test, the citizenship photo provided with the application and the applicant’s proctored webcam photos. A candidate can provide a permanent resident card, a driver’s licence or health card prior to starting the test. This must be provided before starting the test, said Abma, and cannot be added after.

There are instances when verification of identity through photo identification is unable to take place during the citizenship test, he said, but they are rare.

“Regardless of whether it’s due to an applicant error or technical glitch, IRCC officials must invalidate the online test results and invite the applicant to retake the knowledge test in a timely manner,” Abma said.

More than 9,300 people had completed their online citizenship test by the end of January. However, officials would not say how many test results have been invalidated or why, citing “program integrity reasons.”

If someone fails twice, he or she will be referred to an oral knowledge hearing with an immigration officer.

Abma said Alshehadat and his wife would be rescheduled to retake their test, which will be counted as their first attempt at writing the exam.

Source: He passed his Canadian citizenship test — then came a call saying there was a problem

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Douglas Todd: ‘If I say I don’t see skin colour, am I racist?’ asks B.C. government agency

2021/03/13 Leave a comment

Personally, I find the debates over nomenclature less interesting than the substantive issues of discrimination and inequality. That being said, a reasonable billboard campaign, just as the Toronto one “where are you from” was:

Would you ask Doris Day that question?”

That’s how famed jazz singer Billie Holiday responds during a 1957 interview to a journalist who asks, “What it’s like to be a coloured woman?” The scene is in the new movie, The United States vs. Billie Holiday.

The acclaimed singer’s answer reflected the anti-racism approach of that era, which had civil rights leaders urging Americans to see beyond the skin colour of Blacks and other minorities — to treat them equally, like everyone else.

Source: Douglas Todd: ‘If I say I don’t see skin colour, am I racist?’ asks B.C. government agency

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Switzerland’s Mid-Pandemic Burqa Ban Doesn’t Protect Liberal Values or Security. It Marginalizes Muslim Women.

2021/03/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

Switzerland, hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, has been in a partial shutdown since January. Face masks are mandatory everywhere from public transportation to the country’s idyllic ski slopes. But that reality didn’t stop a slim majority of Swiss voters from approving a ban on full-face coverings in public spaces in a March 7 referendum.

The new ban wasn’t motivated by anti-mask sentiment. In fact, it won’t apply to facial coverings worn for health reasons—now or after the pandemic. Rather, the measure was aimed at a minuscule minority of Muslim women who wear the burqa or niqab. And while similar initiatives in France, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Austria have always been controversial, the deeply ironic timing of Switzerland’s burqa ban proves once and for all that efforts to ban face coverings were never really about supposed security concerns surrounding face concealment in public spaces. At their core, burqa bans have always been an attempt to marginalize Muslim women—and they have succeeded in bringing anti-Muslim sentiment into the mainstream.

Switzerland’s referendum was the product of a people’s initiative launched by the Egerkinger Komitee, an advocacy group that includes members of the right-wing, national conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and aimsto organize against “the claims to power of political Islam in Switzerland.” Arguing that “free people show their face” and “the burqa and niqab are not normal clothes,” the group in 2017 collected the required 100,000 petition signatures to put the issue to a referendum. On March 7, 51.2 percent of Swiss voters approved it.

The deeply ironic timing of Switzerland’s burqa ban proves it was never about supposed security concerns.

Clamping down on the visibility of Muslims in Switzerland is nothing new. Swiss Muslims have been under scrutiny since 2004, when Switzerland held a pair of referendums on measures that would have eased access to citizenship for second- and third-generation immigrants. The SVP’s strong mobilization against the initiatives transformed them instead into cultural referendums on whether Muslims are part of the Swiss national community, a notion the majority of Swiss voters rejected. Then, in 2009, the Egerkinger Komitee proposed an initiative that sought to ban minarets on the grounds that they are a symbol of political Islam. It was approved by 57.5 percent of Swiss voters despite the opposition of domestic Muslim organizations and church leaders from other religious groups.

In December 2014, the SVP first sought to prohibit full-face coverings via a parliamentary initiative to amend the Federal Constitution, arguing that burqas are a threat to national security. But the Swiss Council of States rejected it in March 2017 on the grounds that the small number of burqa-clad women in Switzerland meant public order was not disturbed. There was also concern that a ban would have a negative impact on tourism from Gulf countries.

Though the SVP and Egerkinger Komitee have been active for decades, Switzerland’s burqa referendum can’t be explained without the broader regional context: namely, Europe’s crisis of identity in a globalized, multicultural world. Switzerland is only the latest country to express and assuage this cultural insecurity by managing the visibility of Muslims and Islam, which are perceived as a political, ideological, and national security threat to European values and civilization.

Muslims have been part of Europe’s fabric for centuries, but they continue to be misunderstood and misrepresented in media and politics, where Islam is often framed as an inherently violent religion and Muslims are portrayed as incapable of integrating into European societies. While there is certainly some cultural anxiety—the natural result of rapidly changing demographics on the continent—most of the sensationalism is constructed, encouraged, and egged on by political parties that have a vested interest in creating a supposed “Muslim problem.” The purveyors of these ideas seek to convince the broad populace that Islam is a religion inherently at odds with Western values and that Muslims must be tamed and domesticated. Right now, they are winning.

In Switzerland, demonizing Islam, Muslims, and immigrants as hostile to human rights and freedom—of expression, religion, and sexual orientation—has long been a pillar of the SVP’s electoral strategy, as well as that of other populist national conservative parties such as the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland and the Ticino League. Because this fixation has contributed to countless electoral victories for the SVP—transforming it into one of the most powerful parties in the country—others have adopted its strategy.

In left-wing circles, too, there is now a narrative claiming that Islam violates democratic standards and practices. Many Swiss leftists believe that Muslims are particularly susceptible to the use of violence or terrorism, and that they seek to create a society based on religion as a pillar of the social, cultural, and political order. In Geneva, the far-left is split between advocates of a hard-line interpretations of secularism—like the Swiss Party of Labor and its coalition partners—and those supportive of an open and inclusive model that recognizes multiculturalism, like the Solidarity party.

The nascent Swiss debate about secularism mirrors that of its more established French neighbor. In France, the promotion of laïcité—the French brand of secularism—has become a rallying cry for the political and intellectual elite who wish to erase Muslim visibility and enforce assimilation under the guise of legal neutrality.

Once a liberal tool that protected religious freedom and freedom of conscience, laïcité has been weaponized to target the public expressions of Islam that are deemed incompatible with French values, however vaguely defined. In recent years, both the right and the gauche laïcarde (the secularist left) have expressed support for a more restrictive and narrow understanding of laïcité that effectively makes religious Muslims—especially women—disappear from public spaces.

Keeping “political Islam” ill-defined is a boon for Islamophobes.

The French debate about laïcité and Islamic dress reached a fever pitch in the summer of 2016, when several cities across France banned the wearing of burkinis. The bans, which have since been overturned by the Council of State, were introduced as an ostensible effort to curb “political Islam.” At the time, former President Nicolas Sarkozy denounced the full-coverage bathing suits as a “provocation” in support of radical Islam. Likewise, in Switzerland, the new burqa ban was won through allusions to the specter of “political Islam.” Across Europe, the term has proved an effective electoral weapon

The problem is that “political Islam” is a vague notion that can mean virtually anything when alluded to under the mantra of fighting terrorism. For some, wearing a visible Muslim religious garment, eating halal food, or simply having conservative social beliefs is considered a step too far. As a result, authorities can interpret a mandate against “political Islam” very broadly, which can lead to the curtailment of civil liberties. France’s controversial new bill “strengthening republican principles,” which aims to fight “separatism,” is a case in point.

Keeping “political Islam” ill-defined is also a boon for Islamophobes. The SVP’s initiatives have succeeded largely because the party has been able to convince broad swaths of the public that Muslims who choose to make their presence visible simply by practicing their religion—whether by constructing a minaret or wearing a burqa—are attempting to “Islamize” the Swiss public. Then come referendums aimed at erasing any sign of a Muslim presence in Switzerland, with the implication that Muslims must remain invisible to fit into Swiss society. But these bans create an inevitable paradox: Targeting Muslims makes them even more visible, only contributing to an increase of racism and Islamophobia. The process is cyclical.

While Muslims are targeted as a collective, veiled Muslim women bear the brunt of Islamophobic outrage—framed as being victims of patriarchal norms or blindly following religious dictates. But far from liberating, burqa and burkini bans often only serve to exclude Muslim women from public life. Authorities, politicians, pundits, and certain groups of feminists claim to want to “free” Muslim women without including them in that process. And if these women do speak up, there is a systematic distrust of the true freedom of their choice, and therefore of their moral autonomy.

In all of this, it is important to remember that the number of Muslim women who conceal their faces remains vanishingly small in Europe. In 2009, the French newspaper Le Figaro estimated that only 2,000 women in France—out of a total French population of 65 million—wore a face veil for religious or philosophical reasons. In Switzerland, population 8.5 million, that number is estimated between 21 and 37. These are fractions so small they barely register on a calculator.

If the statistical insignificance of Europe’s burqa-clad population seems surprising, that’s because anti-Muslim parties across the political spectrum have successfully inflated the Muslim population in order to provoke fear in voters. In a 2017 survey conducted by Tamedia, a Swiss media company, respondents estimated—on average—that Muslims make up 17.2 percent of the Swiss population. In reality, that number lies at 5.1 percent, according to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office.

Besides burqa bans, it’s hard to think of another instance where the public would support a government initiative that targets so few people. But it makes sense in a climate where political success depends on fear—convincing voters that the “traditional culture” of Europe (whatever that may be) is in decline.

What Europe must recognize is that the hypersecuritization of Islam will only lead to deeper-entrenched segregation, thereby jeopardizing the liberal values it claims to stand for. Switzerland’s burqa ban is proof that the continent has yet to view its Muslim citizens as fully capable of autonomy and self-determination and able to formulate their own political will. If Europe really wants to save itself from cultural decline, recognizing Muslims as full citizens is where it should start.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

How to Reach the Unvaccinated: To counter online misinformation, it helps to knock on doors.

2021/03/12 Leave a comment

Of note, likely similar in Canada:

What does it take to get credible information about the coronavirus vaccine, and the vaccines themselves, to more people?

My colleague Sheera Frenkel spoke to experts and followed a community group as it went door to door in an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Northern California to understand the reasons behind the low vaccination rates for Black and Hispanic Americanscompared with non-Hispanic white people.

What Sheera found, as she detailed in an article on Wednesday, was how online vaccine myths reinforce people’s fears and the ways that personal outreach and easier access to doses can make a big difference.

Shira: What surprised you from your reporting?

Sheera: One question I was trying to answer was whether the incorrect narratives floating around online about the vaccines — that they change people’s DNA or are a means of government control — were reaching Black and Hispanic communities and other people of color in the real world. I heard false information like that firsthand. It was eye opening.

The other surprise was how effective it was for someone to stand on a person’s doorstep and talk about their own experience getting a coronavirus vaccine and answer questions. The outreach group talked to each household for half an hour or longer sometimes. That may make more of a difference than any online health campaign ever could.

But it’s laborious to go door to door. Can reliable information ever travel as far and fast as misinformation?

Internet platforms amplify misinformation, and countering it isn’t simple. It takes more than a celebrity posting a vaccine selfie on Instagram.

Are we overstating the impact of vaccine hesitancy? The pediatrician Rhea Boyd recently wrote in our Opinion section that the primary barrier to Covid-19 vaccinations among Black Americans is a lack of access, not wariness about getting the shot.

It’s both.

Two things struck me from my reporting. First, false vaccine information is persuasive because it builds on something that people know to be true: The medical community has mistreatedpeople of color, and the bias continues. And second, vaccine hesitancy is different in each community.

That makes reaching Black Americans different than reaching new immigrants who are reading articles in Vietnamese or Chinese that make them concerned about vaccine safety. It’s an opportunity for community leaders to address what’s keeping people who trust them from getting vaccinated.YOUR CORONAVIRUS TRACKER: We’ll send you the latest data for places you care about each day.Sign Up

You’ve written about Russian propaganda in Latin America that fanned concerns about European and American coronavirus vaccines. Is that also reaching people in the United States?

Yes. Two Russian state-backed media networks, Sputnik and Russia Today, have among the most popular Spanish-language Facebook pages in the world. Their news reaches Spanish speakers in the United States.

I heard people ask in my reporting, Why should they get an American vaccine when the Russian one is better? (Those articles tend to cite real statistics but in misleading contexts.) I asked one man I met, George Rodriguez, where he had read that, and we figured out that it was from one of those Russian news sites.

What has been effective at increasing the coronavirus vaccination rates among Black and Latino Americans?

It seems effective to hold walk-in vaccination clinics. People can show up, ask questions they have and get a shot.

What about Republicans? Surveysshow that they are among the wariest Americans about coronavirus vaccines.

There have been concerns among some Republicans that people will be forced to get vaccinated, but that isn’t happening. 

It’s clear that among Republicans and other groups with vaccine hesitancy, once we know more people who are getting vaccinated, we’re more willing to do it, too.

How do you see this moving forward?

In just the last few weeks, I’ve gotten more optimistic about closing the vaccination gap. There have been huge strides in reaching people, getting those walk-in vaccination clinics open or taking vaccines to people, and addressing people’s concerns.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/technology/vaccine-misinformation-access.html

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Migrant workers need priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine

2021/03/12 Leave a comment

While some of the specific recommendations have merit (e.g., free access to tests and vaccines, not needing a health card to access vaccines), others are either unnecessary or raise broader policy issues.

For example, a cursory search of PHAC and other public health sites indicates COVID information being available in many languages.

Should vaccination be subject to consent for workers in vulnerable settings or not, given the risks to other workers?

While their advocacy for a number of paid sick days makes sense, other advocacy – permanent residency status, full coverage under labour and social protection laws, family reunification and an effective right to collective bargaining – raise broader policy issues that need more reflection and analysis:

Their general points, attentive information in migrant worker languages (some already being done

Last year, in the first COVID-19 wave, 12% of migrant agricultural workers in Ontario were infected with the virus after arriving in Canada, and three men died. Migrant agricultural workers’ incidence of infection exceeded other high risk occupational categories like front line health care workers. But as the 2021 agricultural season quickly approaches, Canada still has no plan to ensure these essential workers receive priority, free and safe access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

As of 31 January, 5,400 migrant agricultural workers were already in Canada. Over 50,000 more will be returning across the country soon. Media attention waned after the fall harvest season, but COVID-19 outbreaks have continued on farms every month since – including 53 since the end of October.

The virus spreads quickly on farms because migrant workers typically live in crowded employer-provided congregate living quarters. Without a plan to give these workers priority access to the COVID-19 vaccines, we stand on the verge of another season where essential workers will risk their lives to feed Canadians.

Governments promised to increase health and safety inspections for agricultural workers. However, a blitz by health and safety officers this month revealed that nearly one-fifth of Ontario farms are not compliant with COVID safety protocols. Action is required urgently to prevent further tragedy.

Agricultural workers are only the most visible of the 85,000 low-wage migrant workers who come to Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program each year. Other migrant workers perform essential jobs delivering in-home care to children, the elderly and people with disabilities as well as working in meat processing plants, warehouses, food preparation, grocery stores, cleaning services, delivery services, construction and many other jobs that keep the economy running. Tens of thousands more workers are undocumented.

Whether they have temporary or undocumented status, migrant workers need priority access to vaccines because most live in congregate settings and work in spaces or roles that preclude physical distancing, putting them at high risk for infection.

Vaccine access must be delivered with keen awareness of the imbalance of power that puts migrant workers at risk of coercion. Access to vaccines must be free, informed, consensual and safe. Migrant agricultural workers from rural Mexico report travelling a day or more into urban centres to take pre-departure COVID-19 tests for which they have been charged up to $350. They must then take another test after arriving in Canada. This is prohibitive for minimum wage workers. It puts them in debt before they start work in Canada which increases the risk of exploitation.

Here are four steps for government to take to protect workers in accessing the vaccine.

First, migrant workers need access to free COVID-19 testing and vaccines. Workers must also be able to receive both of the required vaccine doses while they are in Canada. Unless this is guaranteed, they may return to their home country not fully vaccinated and without access to the same or any vaccine to complete their immunization.

Second, public education about the vaccines must be delivered directly to migrant workers in their own language. Many racialized migrant workers come from communities that distrust the medical system because of longstanding histories of systemic racism in healthcare. Migrant agricultural workers in southern Ontario have particular reasons to be wary after they were subjected to mass DNA testing by police due to racial profiling in 2013.

Third, migrant workers must be able to access vaccines on the basis of informed consent and that consent must be real. Workers must be able to freely agree to or decline a vaccine. Migrant workers’ precarious immigration status and dependence on their employers due to their employer-specific work permits and housing arrangements must not be leveraged to coerce migrant workers into mandatory vaccination.

Fourth, migrant workers must be able to access vaccines in a way that is safe and attentive to their precarious status. Many migrant workers do not have health cards or coverage under provincial healthcare programs due to the nature of their work permit, being between contracts or being on implied status awaiting their permanent residency. Having a health card must not be a precondition for vaccine access.

At the same time, undocumented migrant workers must be able to access vaccines without fear that their immigration status will be disclosed to the Canadian Border Services Agency. Coming forward to protect themselves, their co-workers and the broader community during a global pandemic must not put them at risk of detention or deportation.

But vaccination alone will not eliminate the risks that migrant workers face.

Like 70% of low wage workers, most migrant workers do not have the right to paid sick days. Governments must move immediately to legislate, on a permanent basis, a minimum of 7 paid sick days with an additional 14 paid sick days during a public health crisis. Unless workers can stay home without penalty when they are ill, poverty and the risk of being fired will force them to keep working. At all times, going to work while sick increases the probability of disease spreading. During the pandemic, it means those who are already most marginalized will continue to become ill and die in disproportionate numbers.

Over the past year, the pandemic has laid bare the underlying structures that drive social and economic inequality in our society. While prioritizing migrant worker access to COVID-19 vaccines is of immediate urgency, real security won’t exist until governments address the laws and policies under Canada’s labour migration programs that make migrant workers exploitable. Permanent residency status, full coverage under labour and social protection laws, family reunification and an effective right to collective bargaining would go a long to more lasting security.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-migrant-workers-need-priority-access-to-the-covid-19-vaccine/

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USA ICE: How Immigration Enforcement Lowered Birth Weights

2021/03/12 Leave a comment

Having watched Immigration Nation, understandable:

Since 2002, counties across the U.S. have entered into agreements with Immigrations and Custom Enforcement to deputize local police officers to perform a range of ICE duties.

New research shows that in one county in North Carolina, the program negatively affected birth outcomes, including lowering average birth weights and decreasing the use of prenatal services by parents.

“Regardless of how you feel about immigration policies, it’s important to realize that there may be other effects that perhaps weren’t intended, but nevertheless have real consequences,” says Christina Gibson-Davis, a professor of public policy at Duke University and one of the authors of the peer-reviewed study. “Health at birth has real downstream effects — it’s related to lower earnings and worse health for adults.”

Immigration has historically been under the purview of the federal government, but in the last few decades, enforcement responsibilities have increasingly been delegated to local police and sheriff’s offices. Some local governments, loosely called “sanctuary cities,” refuse to participate in a number of ways. Others, let’s call them “anti-sanctuary cities,” jump at the chance to prove their tough-on-immigration bonafides. One way they do this is through what are known as 287g agreements.

Mecklenburg County pioneered the use of this program in 2006 to cast a wide net for undocumented immigrants under then-sheriff Jim Pendergraph, who later went on to join ICE’s ranks.

Gibson-Davis, who studies the effect of public policy on low-income families, wanted to test how this county’s 287g agreement might impact birth outcomes, given that social and economic disadvantages of parents are often visible in the health of their newborns.

She and her colleagues compiled data from state birth certificates between 2004 and 2006 and compared birth outcomes before and after the introduction of the policy in Mecklenburg County, where the city of Charlotte is based. They also compared the findings with other North Carolina regions that did not enter into 287g agreements.

After controlling for other factors through a statistical analysis, the researchers found that babies in Mecklenburg County weighed 58.54 grams (a little more than two ounces)less on average than before the policy change. This effect corresponded with an increase in the share of children who were small for their gestational age at birth and a decrease in prenatal care utilization by parents.

“We feel pretty confident that we’ve identified … what we call the ‘causal impact,’” Gibson-Davis says. The effect “wasn’t because of changes in the population necessarily, or some other factor that might have been happening at the same time.”

The researchers didn’t test the reasons for this outcome, but they can make some educated guesses.

“There is a large [body of] literature that suggests that stress can have negative effects on the fetus when it’s in utero, so though we can’t identify the exact cause, stress may be one reason for our findings,” Gibson-Davis says. As to the decrease in prenatal care, Gibson-Davis says those who feared the attention of ICE authorities may be less likely to risk going to a doctor.

The researchers also found that the effects were more pronounced for foreign-born mothers with a lower level of education, which they believe signals a couple of things: One, this group may be more likely to be undocumented; and two, it may include parents who have “fewer resources with which to buffer stress,” Gibson-Davis says. (Data on citizenship status was not included in the study.)

The findings add to a body of research on the adverse health effects of aggressive local immigration enforcement. Other studies have found that Latina and Hispanic pregnant women tend to seek less prenatal care because they lack trust in authorities, and that Latino immigrants report lower mental well-being.

The rationale from Trump-era officials for 287g agreements — a version of which continues to be up on the ICE web page about the program — is that they enhance “the safety and security of communities by creating partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies.” But other research has called this goal into question. Studies have found that 287g agreements don’t reduce crimes and can actually deter immigrants from reporting crime. They can also lead to racial profiling complaints and cause a “chilling effect,” prompting immigrants fearful of increased enforcement in their communities to withdraw from public life, including by frequenting businesses or seeking education services that they need. All of this could play a role in the health outcomes Gibson-Davis studied in her research.

The number of 287(g) agreements multiplied exponentially during the Trump administration. From 2017 to 2018, they doubled from 35 to more than 70. By the time Trump left office, the number of these agreements had jumped to 150. A new Governmental Accountability Office report found that the program’s rapid expansion under Trump took place without adequate oversight, tracking or training.

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More racially diverse areas reported much higher numbers of COVID-19 deaths: StatsCan

2021/03/12 Leave a comment

Confirmation of what we have seen in other studies with respect to minorities being more affected given many are employed in healthcare and other front line occupations:

The most racially diverse neighbourhoods in Canada reported COVID-19 mortality rates more than twice as high as those reported by districts that are overwhelmingly white, according to new data released Wednesday by Statistics Canada.

The report, titled Year in Review, lays bare the uneven effects of this pandemic on Canadians of different racial backgrounds.

The data affirms what some Canadians have reported anecdotally for months: Black people in particular have been far more likely to succumb to the virus than members of other groups.

Source: More racially diverse areas reported much higher numbers of COVID-19 deaths: StatsCan

StatCan report: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-631-x/11-631-x2021001-eng.htm

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How Australia stripped alleged Isis fighter of citizenship without evaluating her case

2021/03/12 Leave a comment

Complete lack of due process:

New Zealand authorities are still refusing to comment publicly on the likely deportation from Turkey of Suhayra Aden, the former Australian-New Zealand dual citizen alleged by Turkish authorities to be an Islamic State terrorist.

But according to one report, it is likely New Zealand officials will eventually escort her from Turkey, along with her two children, aged two and five.

Aden was arrested in mid-February trying to enter Turkey from Syria. Her detention triggered a diplomatic row when it emerged that Australia had stripped the 26-year-old of her Australian citizenship, leaving New Zealand to deal with her predicament.

Born in New Zealand but having lived in Australia since she was six, Aden travelled to Syria on an Australian passport in 2014. Alleged to be involved with Isis, her Australian passport was cancelled in 2020. The timing of her actual loss of citizenship is less clear.

Media coverage has largely centred on New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s accusation that, in stripping Aden of her citizenship, Australia has “abdicated its responsibilities”.

Ardern was right. But what has been less well covered is how the Australian government disabled itself from making a decision – let alone an informed one – on that loss of citizenship.

Aden lost her citizenship automatically under a now-repealed law. That law deprived her of her citizenship without any Australian official evaluating her circumstances.

An automatic rule

Introduced under Tony Abbott’s prime ministership, the powers of citizenship deprivation were enacted in December 2015, early in the Malcolm Turnbull government. Automatic loss of Australian citizenship could occur if:

  • The person was aged over 14
  • They would not be rendered stateless (Aden’s New Zealand co-citizenship ensured this)
  • They had either fought for a declared terrorist organisation or engaged in “disallegient” conduct (defined with reference to various terrorist offences, though not incorporating key elements of those offences)

A person lost their Australian citizenship the instant the statutory conditions were met, irrespective of any official knowing this had occurred. Of course, officials could only act when they found out the relevant conditions had been met – but that might be years later, if ever.

Source: How Australia stripped alleged Isis fighter of citizenship without evaluating her case

Filed under Dual Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Mahboubi, Skuterud – An Economic Reality Check on Canadian Immigration (Part I), Part II link

2021/03/11 Leave a comment

Good and needed critical thinking regarding the limitations and weaknesses of the government’s immigration plan and approach:

COVID-19 travel restrictions hobbled Canada’s immigrant admissions in 2020. In response last fall, the federal government revised its 2021 targets upwards, saying it was necessary for our economic recovery.

Showing its commitment to the ambitious target, on February 13 the government issued invitations to a record-breaking 27,332 applicants in its Canadian Experience Class (CEC) program, which targets applicants with Canadian work experience, and are therefore more likely to be living in Canada.

But to issue so many invitations, it was forced to drop its Comprehensive Ranking System cut-off score in its Express Entry system to an all-time low of 75, far below the previous record of 413. This strategy is analogous to a university doing away with entry standards to significantly boost enrolment. If history is an indicator, there is good reason for concern.

The primary objective of Canada’s economic-class immigration programs is to leverage immigration policy to boost the economic well-being of Canadians. To do that, we need immigration inflows to raise GDP per capita, not simply increase the population.

To assess if we are achieving this objective, Canadian researchers examine earnings of new immigrants. Since workers’ earnings comprise roughly two-thirds of GDP, we need new immigrants to earn more than the national average if we are to raise GDP per capita.

Unfortunately, the evidence is that Canada has historically struggled to achieve this objective, and continues to struggle. The hard reality is that we saw a substantial deterioration in the earnings of subsequent cohorts of new immigrants and an increase in their relative poverty rates from the early 80s to the early 2000s.  

This prompted numerous reforms of skilled immigration policies since 2005, primarily directed at improving immigrant selection, including introducing pre-migration mandatory English/French language testing and education credential assessments. A key piece of the policy reform was the 2015 introduction of the Express Entry system.

Rather than admit applicants who have met the minimum requirements of one of Canada’s economic-class programs on a first-come, first-served basis, the Express Entry system skims the cream of the applicant pool on a regular basis using a tool known as the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS). The CRS assigns each applicant a score between zero and 1,200 using a set of criteria, including age, education, and work experience. The factors and their relative weightings were determined by a statistical analysis predicting immigrants’ earnings during their first 10 years in Canada.

While there is evidence that these reforms have helped curtail the deterioration in immigrants’ earnings, they continue to experience significant economic integration challenges. For example, a recent Statistics Canada study shows that international students who graduated in 2010-2012 earned considerably less than domestic graduates in their first five years after graduation.

Shortfalls of former international students are also evident when their earnings are compared to domestic graduates with similar degrees in similar fields of study.

The economic challenges of Canadian university-educated immigrants are, in fact, exceptional. Whereas university-educated immigrants from India who settle in the United States outperform their US-born counterparts with similar education, the average earnings of Indian-born university-educated immigrants in Canada fall significantly below their Canadian-born counterparts. This reflects the continuing truth that US universities and salary premiums attract the world’s best and brightest while Canada’s relatively generous welfare state attracts migrants less sure of their talents.

Examining the 2016 earnings of recent immigrants admitted under an economic-class program, we find that CEC principal applicants had higher average earnings than the non-immigrant population. When we also include their spouses and dependants, their combined average earnings were only slightly lower than prime-age non-immigrants (Figure 1). This small difference reveals both the success of Canada’s CEC program, but also the risk of forgoing CRS standards to reach immigration targets.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has held 170 Express Entry draws since January 2015. The median CRS cut-off score in past draws was 461 and has never dropped below 413. Lowering the standard to 75 means admitting immigrants who will experience more significant economic-integration challenges. Doing so during an economic crisis with high levels of joblessness seems ill advised.

In the government’s defence, all 27,332 CEC applicants who received invitations in February’s draw have at least one year of Canadian experience, and it is likely that a high percentage are currently employed, and in all likelihood many close to the front line during the pandemic. There are unquestionably compelling ethical reasons for providing these workers and their families with pathways to permanent residency.

But there is a risk in using economic-class programs to achieve humanitarian objectives; it compromises the ability of the Express Entry system to achieve its economic objectives.

The Tinbergen Rule says that for every policy target there should be at least one policy instrument. When there are fewer instruments than targets, the ability of policy to achieve its targets is compromised. Let us make sure that all our immigration programs do at least one thing well, instead of everything badly.

Tomorrow, we examine the potential consequences of increasing immigration during the crisis.

Source: https://www.cdhowe.org/intelligence-memos/mahboubi-skuterud-–-economic-reality-check-canadian-immigration-part-i

Part II: https://www.cdhowe.org/intelligence-memos/mahboubi-skuterud-–-economic-reality-check-canadian-immigration-part-ii

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Stephens: California’s Ethnic Studies Follies: A proposed curriculum magnifies differences, encourages tribal loyalties and advances ideological group think.

2021/03/11 Leave a comment

Some exaggeration regarding divisiveness but valid points regarding over-reach and the risks in not using ethnic studies to look at both the commonalities and differences:

The first time California’s Department of Education published a draft of an ethnic studies “model curriculum” for high school students, in 2019, it managed the neat trick of omitting anti-Semitism while committing it.

More than a million Jews live in California. They are also among the state’s leading victims of hate crimes.

Yet in a lengthy draft otherwise rich with references to various forms of bigotry, there was no mention of bigotry toward Jews. There was, however, an endorsement of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement, which essentially calls for the elimination of the Jewish state. There was also an approving mention of a Palestinian singer rapping that Israelis “use the press so they can manufacture” — the old refrain that lying Jews control the media.

The draft outraged many Jews. And they were joined by Armenian, Assyrian, Hellenic, Hindu and Korean civic groups in a statementurging the California Department of Education to “completely redraft the curriculum.” In its original form, they said, the document was “replete with mischaracterizations and omissions of major California ethnoreligious groups.”

Last September, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would mandate ethnic studies as a graduation requirement in California’s high schools, pending further review of the model curriculum. While some maintained that a critical ethnic studies curriculum was a mistake, and not just for Jews, others took the view that, when it came to those revisions, it was better to be at the table than on it. Progressive Jews helped redraft a curriculum that included two sample lessons on the Jewish-American experience, along with testimonials about Jewishness from the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Dianne Feinstein.

A victory? One can still quarrel with the curriculum’s tendentiously racialized view of the American-Jewish experience. But at least the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist dog whistles have been taken out and the history of anti-Semitism has been put in.

Yet as the Board of Education is set to vote on the new curriculum this month, it is likelier than before to enthrone ethnic studies, an older relative to critical race theory, into the largest public school system in the United States. This is a big deal in America’s ongoing culture wars. And it’s a bad deal for California’s students, at least for those whose school districts decide to make the curriculum their own.

What is “ethnic studies”? Contrary to first impressions, it is not multiculturalism. It is not a way of exploring, much less celebrating, America’s pluralistic society. It is an assault on it. “A multiculturalist framework that views our people through a colonialist lens is what literally led to the need for ethnic studies,” Sharif Zakout of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center told a state Education Department panel last year.

Ethnic studies is less an academic discipline than it is the recruiting arm of a radical ideological movement masquerading as mainstream pedagogy. From the opening pages of the model curriculum, students are expected not just to “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, imperialist/colonial beliefs,” but to “critique empire-building in history” and “connect ourselves to past and contemporary social movements that struggle for social justice.”

That would be fine if it appeared in the pages of, say, The Nation. It would be fine, too, if students were exposed to critical race theory the way they might be exposed to Marxist philosophy or some other ideology — as a subject to be examined, not a lens through which to do the examining. The former is education. The latter is indoctrination. The ethnic studies curriculum conceals the difference.

It also does so in a uniquely lopsided way. “Ethnic studies is for all students,” the curriculum announces. Actually, not so much. Irish-Americans have faced a long history of discrimination in the U.S. and are famously proud of their heritage. But the word “Irish” hardly appears anywhere in the model curriculum, and nowhere in its sample lessons. Russians, Italians, Poles and others rate only the briefest mentions.

Perhaps this is because all of them, like most Jews, have a new identity, known in the jargon of ethnic studies as “conditional whiteness,” which simultaneously erases their past and racializes their present. Leave aside the ignorance this fosters regarding the long history of differences, struggles and achievements by various European ethnic groups in America. It’s also the mirror image of longstanding prejudices regarding “Asians” or “Hispanics” as ethnically undifferentiated masses of mainly identical people.

When the main thing left-wing progressives see about America is its allegedly oppressive systems of ethnicity or color, they aren’t seeing America at all. Nor should they be surprised when right-wing reactionaries adopt a perverse version of their views. To treat “whiteness” — conditional or otherwise — not as an accident of pigmentation but as an ethnicity unto itself is what the David Dukes of the world have always wanted.

It shouldn’t be like this. Public education is supposed to create a sense of common citizenship while cultivating the habits of independent thinking. This is a curriculum that magnifies differences, encourages tribal loyalties and advances ideological groupthink.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/opinion/californias-ethnic-studies.html

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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