Yalnizyan: Our temporary residents provide a resource we can’t ignore

2021/03/09 1 Comment

Armine’s piece coming out of Ryerson’s CERC panel a few months ago.

I remain sceptical regarding maintaining current target levels during a recession and lowering the CRS minimum points to 75 (essentially, anyone 25-34 with one years Canadian work experience) as a good immigration strategy in terms of economic and social outcomes.

And, as StatsCan helpfully remained us, not all temporary workers will necessarily want to transition to permanent status:

Over the last decade or two, about one third of temporary foreign workers and one quarter of international students became landed immigrants within 15 years after their first arrival. TFWs who had low earnings tended to have low earnings after becoming landed immigrants.— feng hou (@fenghou9) March 7, 2021

Worried about immigration during the pandemic? You may be shocked to learn that for every new permanent resident admitted to Canada in 2019, almost three temporary residents were admitted to work or study. Immigration refers only to permanent residents, so any conversation about immigration is only talking about 28 per cent of all the people entering Canada.

This little-known statistic directly informs a recent conversationabout Canada’s Immigration Plan at Ryerson University, the core theme of which is that we could miss a remarkable opportunity if we don’t see the whole chessboard.

In particular, the surest path to an equitable post-COVID-19 recovery involves increasing the number of immigrants Canada accepts by expanding the paths to permanent residency for people already studying and working here, Canada’s temporary residents. That single reform could bolster Canada’s future in both the short and long run. Here’s why:

It comes as no surprise that Canada’s immigration intake was almost cut in half as a result of COVID-19, bringing us back to levels last seen in the late 1990s. Those levels are not good enough for the post-pandemic future, which will be marked by population aging and a shrinking working-age cohort.

The pandemic accelerated a process already in play, with more people over 55 exiting the workforce than entrants aged 25 and younger. This dynamic hastens that moment when Canada’s net labour-force growth goes negative if not for the addition of workers born outside Canada. A shrinking Canadian labour force, with little or no productivity growth since 2015, is a recipe for economic decline. That’s not a future anyone wants.

Nonetheless, some experts are worried about Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino’s pledge to make up for the shortfall in the 2020 target of 341,000 new immigrants by increasing targets over the next three years: 401,000 new immigrants in 2021, rising to 421,000 by 2023.

For critics, it’s too soon for such ambitious plans. COVID-19-related job losses and foregone hours of paid work mean the current labour underutilization rate is over 18 per cent. Given that the pandemic hit low-income workers the hardest, and that low-income workers are disproportionately women, youth, racialized minorities and recent immigrants, it could seem counterproductive to add more people to the mix as the nation’s hardest-hit citizens struggle to find their feet again in the post-pandemic world. Indeed, the Conservative immigration critic, Raquel Dancho, describes the goal of accepting 1.2 million new immigrants by 2023 as “pure fantasy.”

Higher targets do raise legitimate concerns about the well-known challenges of integration, given the current inadequacy of settlement services. But is the Liberals’ plan really so unattainable and undesirable?

Consider the numbers: Canada accepted more than 1.2 million newcomers in just one year, 2019, (see Chart 1) through permits for both permanent and temporary residency — a number that has increased steadily over the years, particularly among for those brought into Canada for economic reasons.

In 2019 (see Chart 2), about 30 per cent of those who entered Canada as permanent residents had made the transition from temporary-resident status. We can easily accommodate 1.2 million new immigrants over the next three years if we draw from the ranks of temporary residents who already work or study here. They have adjusted to life in Canada to some degree. Providing them with better settlement services like subsidized housing, English/French as a second language instruction and learning supports is a low-cost, high-yield return on public spending that also creates new jobs for Canadians.

Ironically, admitting more immigrants may be the surest path to a more equitable recovery, if one looks at the entire system of the intake of newcomers, including temporary residents. We don’t know for sure how many want to stay, but there’s plenty of demand for pathways to permanence among the more than 530,000 international students, 459,000 migrant workers (via the International Mobility Programs) and 77,000 temporary foreign workers who were in Canada as of December 31, 2020, and that’s in the middle of a pandemic. It is hard to believe that this deep well of human aspiration could not satisfy most, if not all, of the minister’s goal of adding 50,000 more immigrants this year. More generally, failing to integrate those who are already here studying and working and who want to stay is like leaving money on the table.

Though hard to imagine right now, we will soon be looking at widespread labour shortages. While population aging creates an unprecedented opportunity to increase skills and employment opportunities for whole groups of systemically underemployed Canadian residents, like the ones hardest hit by the pandemic, we’ll nonetheless need more newcomers to address temporary and permanent labour and skills shortages.

Historically, we have admitted more permanent residents than temporary ones to address labour shortages. But in 2006 the lines crossed. Ever since, we’ve admitted more migrant workers than economic immigrants. Take a hard look at the trajectory in Chart 2 and ask yourself: can you imagine living in a society where the vast majority of economic newcomers are migrants? Is this the future you envision for Canada?

The shift described in Chart 2 erodes workers’ rights in industries like accommodation, food service, personal services, elder care and child care, long-term care, and some types of manufacturing. These sectors, which have long relied on low-wage immigrants, reduce costs even further by turning to migrant workers with even less ability to exercise statutory labour protections. Exhibit A: seasonal agricultural workers, the essential workers who make sure we are fed, but may not be able to protect their own health and safety. Most come back, year after year; but this year some couldn’t even get tests or take time off when they fell ill with COVID-19. We can do better, for them and for us.

This process has begun. Small steps to create more pathways to permanence started in 2019, with a new pilot for personal care workers, joined by two others in 2020 for seasonal agricultural workers and live-in caregivers, and one for health-care workersin 2021. To these measures was added the recent federal invitation to basically everyone in Canada to put in an application to become a permanent resident. Last month the federal government drew 27,800 people from these applications. 

Canadian immigration is based on a point system, and the lowest score of applicants was 75. A normal draw features applicants with 400 points, sometimes more. Does this downgrade the “quality” of immigrants and hence their ability to integrate? No. They were already here, studying and working, but at risk of losing their status and deported during the pandemic. This was effectively a regularization program. (Note: Canada hasn’t had a major regularization program for residents without status since the 1970s, under Trudeau père. If not during a pandemic, when should such measures be taken? Never?)

We should celebrate, not be afraid of these measures. Permitting more migrant workers to transition to permanent status increases their ability to access labour protections and basic human rights. If we reduce exploitation of these workers, we improve working conditions for everyone in the workplaces where they are employed.

The de facto “two-step immigration process” that has emerged in recent years has been primarily driven by business demands for faster intake of newcomers, but could lead to better integration and lives for “low” and “high” skilled workers alike. If temporary foreign workers are good enough to work for us, they are good enough to live among us, permanently, if that is what they wish.

Let’s not look at the immigration story with our eyes wide shut. How we live with others will define the labour market, society, and future of Canada.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2021/03/06/our-temporary-residents-provide-a-resource-we-cant-ignore.html

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Gender Results Framework: Data table on gender representation in federal leadership roles

2021/03/09 Leave a comment

Text – Selected

Underwhelming. Overly general, no intersectionality data but will save some time for those like me who track this stuff. More interesting would be broader examination of federal leadership roles beyond MPs:

Statistics Canada’s Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics has released a new data table on gender representation in federal government leadership roles. This information will be used by the Gender Results Framework, a whole-of-government tool designed to track gender equality in Canada.

Using open data from the House of Commons of Canada, the Centre has produced a table that shows the gender distribution of members of Parliament and of ministers appointed to the federal Cabinet. This information could be used to track, over time, gender representation in elected office and appointments to ministerial positions in the federal government.

Open data refer to structured data that are machine-readable and freely shared, used and built on without restrictions. The data included in this table are sourced from the House of Commons of Canada and are licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.

These new data will soon be housed on the Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics Hub.

Personally, find employment equity public service, governor-in-council, judicial and senate appointments more interesting and relevant than this general dataset.

Hopefully StatsCan’s new hub will become more relevant over time and broaden its reach in cooperation with other agencies such as TBS, PSC and PCO.

Source: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210308/dq210308f-eng.htm?CMP=mstatcan

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COVID-19 pandemic prompts recent newcomers to leave Canada for their home countries

2021/03/08 Leave a comment

Data on departures less accurate than arrivals. But a decline in permanent residents of 41,000 in 2020 compared to 2019 using labour force data is much smaller than the drop in new permanent residents, which fell by 156,000, so I think the significance is over-stated:

The economic and life disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted some recent immigrants to leave Canada and return to their countries of origin, where they have more social and family connections.

The number of permanent residents who have been in Canada for less than five years declined by four per cent to 1,019,000 by the end of 2020 from 1,060,000 the year before, according to an analysis of Statistics Canada’s labour force survey that measures the number of workers between 15 and 65 years old by their immigration status.

The number had grown three per cent a year, on average, in the previous 10 years.

The data show that the number of permanent residents who have been in Canada for five to 10 years also dropped from 1,170,000 in 2019 to 1,146,000 in 2020.

“It’s actually not uncommon to have immigrants go back to their home country during the recessionary periods,” said Robert Falconer, a researcher at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.

“If they’ve lost their job, they can go and live with their family and not pay rent. They can maybe find some social connections and work back home.”

He said the number of new immigrants fell by about three per cent between 2008 and 2009 during the financial crisis and the recession that followed.

He said many of those who have left in the past year might not come back if the economy doesn’t recover quickly.

“The longer they stay at home in their home countries, the less likely they are to come back to Canada.”

A study by Statistics Canada released in August showed that in the early months of the pandemic, recent immigrants to Canada were more likely than Canadian-born workers to lose their jobs, mainly because they had held them for less time and, as a whole, are overrepresented in lower-wage employment. That includes in service-sector jobs.

Julien Bérard-Chagnon, an analyst with Statistics Canada, said the agency doesn’t keep a monthly count of immigrants who leave the country but a group of its analysts are now working on a paper to examine the issue during COVID-19 pandemic.

“The literature signals that immigrants, especially recent immigrants, are more likely to emigrate than the Canadian-born population,” he said.

While the pandemic has also driven down immigration to Canada by about 40 per cent in 2020 compared to 2019, the Liberal government announced in October that Canada is seeking to admit upwards of 1.2 million new permanent residents in the next three years, including 401,000 this year.

But this number seems optimistic as travel restrictions and the sharp economic downtown remain.

“I doubt they will hit their target this year,” Falconer said.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said the government is very confident it will meet it immigration targets in the next three years.

“In January 2021, we welcomed more new permanent residents than in January 2020, when there was no pandemic,” Alexander Cohen said in a statement.

“We’re already ahead of schedule, welcoming new permanent residents at a rate 37 per cent higher than our projections.”

Falconer said the government is focusing on transitioning temporary residents in Canada to permanent status.

“It’s the best thing to do for people who are living here,” he said. “But in terms of this population growth, it’s a wash, meaning that we’re not actually increasing our population.”

He said this policy is necessary but not sufficient to help the government meet its high immigration target this year.

“Not every temporary resident wants to become a Canadian permanent resident or Canadian citizen. Some of them are here to work, to study and they are perfectly happy to go back home.”

He said the incentive for the government is still to try to increase immigration numbers, especially in jobs related to health care and technology because having fewer immigrants will harm these two sectors more than others.

Andrew Griffith, a former director of citizenship and multiculturalism at the Immigration Department, says immigrants who arrive during an economic downturns tend to suffer economically, at least in the short term, more than those who arrive when the economy is growing.

He said maintaining high levels of immigration at a time when the economy is weak and sectors such as hospitality, retail and tourism are devastated has an element of irresponsibility.

Griffith said immigrants leaving Canada can reflect a failure of Canadian integration policies.

He said the government needs to put more focus on immigrants who are already here as we face structural change in sectors including hospitality, travel and service industries that will affect mostly women, visible minorities and recent immigrants.

“We may be in a fairly structural shift that will eliminate some jobs or dramatically reduce some jobs, and then what kind of retraining programs or other programs we need to support people as they transition.”

Cohen said the government has invested in settlement services during the COVID-19 pandemic by increasing funding to help boost wages by 15 per cent. It has helped buy personal protective equipment to keep staff safe, as well as cellphones and laptops to ensure services, including language training and job-search help, can be offered remotely.

Falconer said the government should address problems with licensing and professional development that many newcomers face in Canada.

“We make it very, very difficult for somebody who worked in a profession in their home country to come here and work in the same profession.”

“Immigrants come here with aspirations or hopes of being able to work and earn a much better living here in Canada than they did in their home country and they discover that they’re actually going to be working in an unpaid, underemployed job.”

Source: COVID-19 pandemic prompts recent newcomers to leave Canada for their home countries

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Diversity is on a collision course with bilingualism at Canada’s top court

2021/03/08 1 Comment

Tend to agree:

Should all Supreme Court of Canada judges — or at least the next one — be bilingual? Should the next vacancy go to a Black, brown or Indigenous jurist, whether they are bilingual or not, to reflect Canada’s population in all its diversity?

It’s a legal dilemma wrapped up in a language debate, tinged with electoral politics, and an existential question about what kind of country Canada is.

The Trudeau government has kicked off both.

On the same day it announced the launch of a search for an Ontario jurist to take the seat of soon-to-retire Justice Rosalie Abella, the Liberal government said it plans to put into law Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s practice of appointing only “functionally bilingual” judges to the top court.

It was a campaign commitment, and with a whiff of a possible election in the air, Trudeau is ticking off political boxes.

But the “how?” he proposes to do it is less clear. And advocates of greater diversity say mandatory bilingualism will block many qualified candidates from being elevated to the Supreme Court.

Six months ago the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers wrote an open letter to the Trudeau government urging swifter action to address systemic anti-Black racism throughout the justice system and noting “only three Black judges have been appointed under the Trudeau-led government.”

Raphael Tachie, senior counsel for TD Financial Group and president of the association, in an interview said the top court should be a bilingual institution but the requirement “that each individual justice be bilingual disqualifies a lot of really qualified Black and racialized jurists that we think would be great appointments to the court.”

Many practising outside Quebec have not been exposed to French language or training, or “come to the language later on in life and might not always be as proficient as they ought to be. That’s the challenge,” he said, adding “I think the court can compensate for that,” using translators and interpretation. He urges Trudeau to look beyond the Ontario Court of Appeal to lower courts and the bar: “You need to elevate your talent,” he said.

Brad Regehr, the first Indigenous lawyer to lead the Canadian Bar Association, says the same is true for Indigenous candidates who “already face systemic barriers in terms of achieving that proficiency in official languages.” Regehr says it’s time for Trudeau to name someone who is Black, Indigenous or a person of colour to the Supreme Court.

A member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in Saskatchewan who lives and practices law in Winnipeg, Regehr argues that Canada is “not just a bijuridical state where there’s English common law and French civil law; Indigenous legal traditions form part of the law of Canada and that seems to be forgotten or ignored and the only way you’re going to get any perspective on that is by having an Indigenous judge.”

Both want Trudeau to walk his progressive talk, and do something concrete to promote reconciliation and diversity.

Right now, the Supreme Court of Canada is the only federally-appointed court that is exempt from the Official Languages Act which says all Canadians must be able to access services in federal courts in either English or French. In other words, it puts the onus on federal courts to provide bilingual services, not on prime ministers to appoint only bilingual judges. The Liberals propose to drop the exception.

Trudeau does not intend to change the Supreme Court Act which sets out the eligibility criteria for judicial appointments to the top court.

Rachel Rappaport, a spokesperson for Justice Minister David Lametti, says the bilingual services exemption for the Supreme Court “was never intended to be permanent.”

In 1988 Conservative justice minister Ray Hnatyshyn said during debates on the Official Languages Act that, “It is probably in the national interest at this time that we not put any constraints on the court in the way in which it does its business.” He said that “until we reach a more developed stage of bilingualism across the country,” governments should be able pick from among “the best people who are unilingual, in both languages.”

There have been at least 10 bills introduced over the past 10 years to require top judges be bilingual, according to Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin, a doctoral candidate at University of Toronto’s faculty of law. None has passed.

But unilingualism has had an impact, says Bédard-Rubin, who with a colleague has done the first empirical study of the impact of unilingualism on the Supreme Court’s operations. They analyzed cases from 1969 to 2013. In an interview, he said, “There tends to be a linguistic separation of labour at the Supreme Court.”

Despite access to interpreters and translation, anglophone judges “will sit more and write more in cases argued in English and francophone judges will sit more and write more on cases argued in French. And this is regardless of their areas of expertise,” he said. Unilingual judges are less assertive on cases argued in another language and litigants “might lose that expertise” where unilingual judges stand down or just “go with the flow.”

“The general picture that emerges is that language proficiency superimposes itself as another kind of legal specialization in the inner-working of the court,” he wrote.

There’s another twist. Some legal scholars suspect that the Liberals are trying to do through a back door (via the Official Languages Act) what they may not be able to do through the front door (via the Supreme Court Act): that is, rewrite the eligibility rules for judges. That’s because in 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Parliament “cannot unilaterally modify the composition or other essential features of the court,” saying it requires a constitutional amendment.

Gerard Kennedy, assistant professor in the faculty of law at the University of Manitoba, said it’s debatable whether making bilingualism mandatory is the kind of “essential” characteristic that is protected by the Constitution. And if the Liberals took that route, he said it would quickly become very divisive. “By amending the Official Languages Act, it draws less attention to it.”

But the government seems to have allowed itself some wiggle room — at least for the next appointment. There is one Ontario vacancy coming open on July 1, and another one within two years when Michael Moldaver will turn 75.

The languages law reform document states in drafting the change, the government is weighing the appointment of Indigenous judges to the Supreme Court of Canada along with case law on the court’s “composition and eligibility criteria.”

Meanwhile, the Liberals are using their plan it as a “political chip” as Bédard-Rubin calls it, part of a political strategy to paint the Conservatives as soft on bilingualism.

Trudeau challenged Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole outright in the Commons two weeks ago to commit to naming only bilingual judges on the top court, claiming Conservatives do “not support bilingualism in Canada.”

Conservative justice critic Rob Moore declined an interview request but in an email said, “Conservatives expect appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada are based on competency and legal excellence. Bilingualism or a commitment to learn or improve one’s French will also be a key principle in appointments to the Supreme Court for a future Conservative government.”

The NDP and the Bloc Québécois have long called for bilingual Supreme Court judges.

It’s not clear if the latest proposal will come to pass before a federal election, whenever it comes.

Source: ANALYSIS Diversity is on a collision course with bilingualism at Canada’s top court

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COVID-19: Ethnic Media Lessons from 2020 for an Inclusive Recovery

2021/03/08 Leave a comment

Useful and informative summary and report:

Multilingual International Research and Ethnic Media Services presents its year long research into ethnic media coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 in the form of five articles. These articles were published or excerpted by New Canadian Media as a result of support from Canadian Heritage through its Digital Citizen Contribution Program. We would like to thank New Canadian Media for giving us the opportunity to write these pieces.

The white paper provides an overview of the lessons learned in 2020 from engaging with diverse communities in the fight against the COVID-19, which may useful in 2021 as the pandemic continues. In order to capture coverage needed to produce this white paper, we spent a year regularly monitoring over 800 ethnic media outlets across Canada in 30+ language groups.

The 30+ language groups/communities whose ethnic media we tracked include Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Caribbean, Chinese (incl. Cantonese & Mandarin), Farsi, Filipino, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Korean, Muslim, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Somali, South Asian, Spanish, Sri Lankan, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese.

The ethnic media outlets we tracked spanned the four mediums of print, web, radio and TV and were mostly based in the metropolitan areas of Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. These urban centres attract the most immigrants each year, thus resulting in a concentration of ethnic media outlets in Canada’s most populated cities.

The actionable intelligence gained as a result of our ethnic media research provides insight into the impact of COVID-19 on newcomers and racialized communities, who have been some of the most affected by the pandemic. Out of the 1,130 translated ethnic media story summaries we produced in 2020 for this report, 169 were focused on mental health, 193 on the economic impact of COVID-19, 350 on immigration and 118 on the culture vs. economy debate as a cause of the prevalence of COVID-19.

 Our white paper is divided into five pieces, four written by MIREMS Editor-in-Chief Silke Reichrath and one by MIREMS President Andres Machalski. The following are brief abstracts:

 1) Media Representation of Newcomer Communities with High COVID-19 Rates

This channel is extremely influential in the fight against social media disinformation among newcomers. It shows these outlets fulfill a very real need to translate government and expert messaging into culturally and linguistically relevant formats and in adding information from the grassroots. This channel is extremely influential in the fight against social media disinformation among newcomers 

2) Mental Health and Domestic Violence in the Ethnic Media

Stigma around mental health challenges is still widespread in newcomer communities and many newcomers are not aware of available supports through community organizations and settlement service providers, especially now that programs have moved online. In this context, ethnic media have a significant role to play in raising awareness around mental health issues, the impacts of the pandemic on different segments of the population, and the services available to them.

3) Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Immigration Communities

The ethnic media have fulfilled a valuable role during the pandemic in keeping their audiences informed about the latest public health guidelines regarding business openings and closures, and about benefits and aid programs available from the three levels of government. These outlets have raised awareness in general about how the pandemic is affecting the national and local economy, have featured charitable initiatives by the community, and have encouraged community members to support local businesses by buying local, particularly from smaller businesses. Recovery is only a matter of time, and ethnic media can be expected to do their share in reflecting community concerns and advocating for equity in the rebuilding process.

 Ethnic media have been instrumental in highlighting community initiatives to counteract the pandemic spread and in giving voice to grassroots opinions. It shows these outlets fulfill a very real need to translate government and expert messaging into culturally and linguistically relevant formats and in adding information from the grassroots.

  4) COVID-19 Impact on Immigration – Analysis

Over the pandemic year of 2020, the ethnic media has been instrumental in reporting on and clarifying government policy, processes and programs. Ethnic media coverage focused on the impact of COVID on immigration levels, border closures and travel restrictions, visa extensions for temporary residents stranded in Canada, work permit regulations, farm worker rights and COVID safety protocols, COVID-related accommodations for international students, modifications to the Express Entry draws, and the guardian angel program for front-line care providers. The ethnic media also documented the unique challenges different migrant constituencies face, reflecting the lived experiences of the various newcomer communities.

5) The Role of Ethnic Media in the War Against Pandemic, Pandemonium, Poverty and Panic

The ethnic media undeniably exists and is part of the communications fabric of our society, but it is one that is often ignored, despite its key positioning as a conduit to and from diverse communities. These outlets are essential to the central position diverse communications will play in restoring the social cohesion needed to overcome not only the COVID-19 virus, but its fall out. Canadian corporate and government leaders need to recognize the ethnic media as a key asset in the fight against COVID-19, which is at the same time a fight against social disruption, poverty, and mental anguish.

Source: http://www.mirems.com/uploads/8/1/4/2/8142628/covid-19_-ethnic_media_lessons_from_2020-_white_paper.pdf

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International students warming to US after Biden victory

2021/03/08 Leave a comment

We shall see how this affects Canada’s relative position but the largest source country for international students is also India as is the case in the US survey. Certainly the Trump administration did result in increased interest in studying and working in Canada:

International students’ perceptions of the United States as a study destination have significantly improved following the presidential election win by Joe Biden, according to new research by IDP Connect. 

The improved perceptions of the US among students surveyed in early 2021 could impact on the pulling power of rival destination countries Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, the research suggests. 

A survey of more than 800 prospective international students in more than 40 countries who are interested in studying in the US – albeit with more than half of respondents based in India – has found that more than three quarters (76%) have improved perceptions of the US since the 2020 presidential election, with 67% stating they are now more likely to study there. 

“I really hope that the result of the election helps students like me to move to America and pursue our dreams,” said one respondent.

Simon Emmett, CEO of IDP Connect, said US higher education institutions should review their marketing and recruitment programmes to take full advantage of the change in perceptions. 

“Since the election in November 2020, we’ve seen higher search activity for the US, with the US now overtaking the UK in regard to international student search volumes.” 

He said: “US universities, colleges and education institutions should be looking at their recruitment strategies and practices to ensure they capture this momentum and support students in their decision-making process.”

When asked how nine key factors would be affected by the Biden administration, respondents expected all to improve, with the welfare of international students, safety of its citizens and visitors, and post-study work visa policies perceived to see the most improvements. 

Furthermore, the majority of students (69%) expected the new presidential administration would have a positive effect on their home country. 

As the students surveyed were at the early stages of their journey, many indicated they are still considering other destinations. Of those surveyed, half (50%) were also considering Canada, while 41% were considering the UK, just over a quarter (28%) were considering Australia and 13% were considering New Zealand as their study destination in addition to the US. 

Increased competition

This suggests that rising demand for study places in the US could mean increased competition for market share among these rival destination countries, the research notes.

The survey also showed that students from Africa were more likely to be exploring their study options in the US and Canada, while Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian students tended to look at the US and UK, IDP Connect said. The country from which students had the most improved perception of the US was Kenya.

A prospective graduate student from Nigeria said: “With this new administration, the United States will favour citizens of my country to study appropriately with due consideration.”

Emmett said the findings of the research are a reminder that students are tuned into global political discussions. 

“Of the students who stated they have a high awareness of US politics, 86% reported a better perception following the election,” Emmett said. 

Respondents were asked to rate how they feel the new administration would affect nine key factors on a scale of 0-10, with 0 representing ‘will become much worse’ and 10 representing ‘will become much better’. Overall, students expect all nine factors to improve. 

This list was topped by ‘welfare of international students’ (7.52), followed by ‘safety of citizens and visitors’ (7.48), ‘post-study work visa policies’ (7.32), ‘economic stability of the US’ (7.28), ‘perceptions of the US overseas’ (7.24), ‘response to coronavirus’ (7.17), ‘political stability of the US’ (7.11), ‘management of social issues, eg community divisions’ (7.10) and ‘travel restriction policies’ (6.94).

Among respondents, 13% indicated they had high awareness of US politics (‘I follow US politics closely’), compared with moderate awareness (34%), low awareness (42%) and no awareness (‘I do not follow US politics’) (11%). 

Biden’s first steps

On his first day in office, Biden revoked former president Donald Trump’s travel bans blocking people from seven mostly Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States, a critical first step towards rebuilding the reputation of US higher education in a global context.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education (ACE), in late November wrote to then President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris on behalf of 43 US university associations calling on them to move to ensure that American colleges and universities are “once again, the destination of choice for the world’s best international students and scholars”.

They urged Biden to withdraw Trump administration proposals to limit international students’ duration of stay and make it harder and costlier to obtain H-1B visas, which provide a pathway for foreign-born researchers to stay in the US on a long-term basis.

They also urged him to make it clear that the Optional Practical Training programme would remain in place. 

Biden has since proposed across the board changes to US immigration laws, including a step to make it easier for international graduate students with advanced STEM degrees to stay in the US by exempting them from immigrant visa caps. 

The draft immigration bill also includes permission for ‘dual intent’, which would mean student visa applicants no longer have to promise that they intend to leave the US when they finish their studies. Under the current single intent requirement, nine in 10 visa denials – close to a quarter of all applications – relate to a failure to convince officials that they solely intend to come and study and then leave.

However, it is not clear yet if the bill could garner enough political support.

Emmett said: “While the new administration has a more welcoming stance towards international students than the predecessor, it will be interesting to see if student perceptions of the US as a study destination continue to improve over the long term.”

Motivations for study in US

When asked why they are interested in studying in the US, the top motivation among respondents was ‘quality of teaching compared to my home country’ (64%), ‘modern, progressive, dynamic’ (59%), ‘institution or university of choice is located there’ (46%), ‘availability of part-time work’ (43%), ‘multicultural’ (33%), ‘attractive climate, weather, environment’ (30%), ‘safe country’ (29%), ‘Optional Practical Training or post-study work programme’ (26%), ‘affordable place to live and study’ (18%) and ‘family or friends recommended’ (14%). 

Among those who responded, 51% were interested in graduate programmes, 30% in undergraduate programmes and 19% in other (non-degree) programmes. Their expected start date of studying abroad was April to July 2021 (19%), August to October 2021 (38%), January to March 2022 (12%), April to July 2022 (6%), August to October 2022 (15%) and ‘beyond 2022’ (8%).

The survey results come with the caveat that they are dominated by views of students in India, one of the largest source countries for international students in the US. A majority and by far the largest group of respondents were located in India (483), followed by Kenya (74), Bangladesh (74), Indonesia (50), Egypt (29), Pakistan (27), Nepal (22), Philippines (22), Vietnam (16) and Cambodia (15). 

In 2019-20 the top five source countries for the more than one million international students in the US were: China, 372,532 students (34.6%); India, 193,124 (18%); South Korea, 49,809 (4.6%); Saudi Arabia, 30,957 (2.9%); and Canada, 25,992 (2.4%), according to datafrom the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report.

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-nl.php?story=20210303133839873

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The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting

2021/03/08 Leave a comment

Implications for many white collar workers, including in government given the nature of repetitive operational work:

The robots are coming. Not to kill you with lasers, or beat you in chess, or even to ferry you around town in a driverless Uber.

These robots are here to merge purchase orders into columns J and K of next quarter’s revenue forecast, and transfer customer data from the invoicing software to the Oracle database. They are unassuming software programs with names like “Auxiliobits — DataTable To Json String,” and they are becoming the star employees at many American companies.

Some of these tools are simple apps, downloaded from online stores and installed by corporate I.T. departments, that do the dull-but-critical tasks that someone named Phil in Accounting used to do: reconciling bank statements, approving expense reports, reviewing tax forms. Others are expensive, custom-built software packages, armed with more sophisticated types of artificial intelligence, that are capable of doing the kinds of cognitive work that once required teams of highly-paid humans.

White-collar workers, armed with college degrees and specialized training, once felt relatively safe from automation. But recent advances in A.I. and machine learning have created algorithms capable of outperforming doctors, lawyers and bankers at certain parts of their jobs. And as bots learn to do higher-value tasks, they are climbing the corporate ladder.

The trend — quietly building for years, but accelerating to warp speed since the pandemic — goes by the sleepy moniker “robotic process automation.” And it is transforming workplaces at a pace that few outsiders appreciate. Nearly 8 in 10 corporate executives surveyed by Deloitte last year said they had implemented some form of R.P.A. Another 16 percent said they planned to do so within three years.

Most of this automation is being done by companies you’ve probably never heard of. UiPath, the largest stand-alone automation firm, is valued at $35 billion — roughly the size of eBay — and is slated to go public later this year. Other companies like Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, which have Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola and Walgreens Boots Alliance as clients, are also enjoying breakneck growth, and tech giants like Microsoft have recently introduced their own automation products to get in on the action.

Executives generally spin these bots as being good for everyone, “streamlining operations” while “liberating workers” from mundane and repetitive tasks. But they are also liberating plenty of people from their jobs. Independent experts say that major corporate R.P.A. initiatives have been followed by rounds of layoffs, and that cutting costs, not improving workplace conditions, is usually the driving factor behind the decision to automate. 

Craig Le Clair, an analyst with Forrester Research who studies the corporate automation market, said that for executives, much of the appeal of R.P.A. bots is that they are cheap, easy to use and compatible with their existing back-end systems. He said that companies often rely on them to juice short-term profits, rather than embarking on more expensive tech upgrades that might take years to pay for themselves.

“It’s not a moonshot project like a lot of A.I., so companies are doing it like crazy,” Mr. Le Clair said. “With R.P.A., you can build a bot that costs $10,000 a year and take out two to four humans.”

Covid-19 has led some companies to turn to automation to deal with growing demand, closed offices, or budget constraints. But for other companies, the pandemic has provided cover for executives to implement ambitious automation plans they dreamed up long ago.

“Automation is more politically acceptable now,” said Raul Vega, the chief executive of Auxis, a firm that helps companies automate their operations.

Before the pandemic, Mr. Vega said, some executives turned down offers to automate their call centers, or shrink their finance departments, because they worried about scaring their remaining workers or provoking a backlash like the one that followed the outsourcing boom of the 1990s, when C.E.O.s became villains for sending jobs to Bangalore and Shenzhen.

But those concerns matter less now, with millions of people already out of work and many businesses struggling to stay afloat.

Now, Mr. Vega said, “they don’t really care, they’re just going to do what’s right for their business,” Mr. Vega said.

Sales of automation software are expected to rise by 20 percent this year, after increasing by 12 percent last year, according to the research firm Gartner. And the consulting firm McKinsey, which predicted before the pandemic that 37 million U.S. workers would be displaced by automation by 2030, recently increased its projection to 45 million.

A white-collar wake-up call

Not all bots are the job-destroying kind. Holly Uhl, a technology manager at State Auto Insurance Companies, said that her firm has used automation to do 173,000 hours’ worth of work in areas like underwriting and human resources without laying anyone off.

“People are concerned that there’s a possibility of losing their jobs, or not having anything to do,” she said. “But once we have a bot in the area, and people see how automation is applied, they’re truly thrilled that they don’t have to do that work anymore.”

As bots become capable of complex decision-making, rather than doing single repetitive tasks, their disruptive potential is growing.

Recent studies by researchers at Stanford University and the Brookings Institution compared the text of job listings with the wording of A.I.-related patents, looking for phrases like “make prediction” and “generate recommendation” that appeared in both. They found that the groups with the highest exposure to A.I. were better-paid, better-educated workers in technical and supervisory roles, with men, white and Asian-American workers, and midcareer professionals being some of the most endangered. Workers with bachelor’s or graduate degrees were nearly four times as exposed to A.I. risk as those with just a high school degree, the researchers found, and residents of high-tech cities like Seattle and Salt Lake City were more vulnerable than workers in smaller, more rural communities.

“A lot of professional work combines some element of routine information processing with an element of judgment and discretion,” said David Autor, an economist at M.I.T. who studies the labor effects of automation. “That’s where software has always fallen short. But with A.I., that type of work is much more in the kill path.”

Many of those vulnerable workers don’t see this coming, in part because the effects of white-collar automation are often couched in jargon and euphemism. On their websites, R.P.A. firms promote glowing testimonials from their customers, often glossing over the parts that involve actual humans.

“Sprint Automates 50 Business Processes In Just Six Months.” (Possible translation: Sprint replaced 300 people in the billing department.)

“Dai-ichi Life Insurance Saves 132,000 Hours Annually” (Bye-bye, claims adjusters.)

“600% Productivity Gain for Credit Reporting Giant with R.P.A.”(Don’t let the door hit you, data analysts.)

Jason Kingdon, the chief executive of the R.P.A. firm Blue Prism, speaks in the softened vernacular of displacement too. He refers to his company’s bots as “digital workers,” and he explained that the economic shock of the pandemic had “massively raised awareness” among executives about the variety of work that no longer requires human involvement.

“We think any business process can be automated,” he said.

Mr. Kingdon tells business leaders that between half and two-thirds of all the tasks currently being done at their companies can be done by machines. Ultimately, he sees a future in which humans will collaborate side-by-side with teams of digital employees, with plenty of work for everyone, although he conceded that the robots have certain natural advantages.

“A digital worker,” he said, “can be scaled in a vastly more flexible way.”

Humans have feared losing our jobs to machines for millennia. (In 350 BCE, Aristotle worried that self-playing harps would make musicians obsolete.) And yet, automation has never created mass unemployment, in part because technology has always generated new jobs to replace the ones it destroyed.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, some lamplighters and blacksmiths became obsolete, but more people were able to make a living as electricians and car dealers. And today’s A.I. optimists argue that while new technology may displace some workers, it will spur economic growth and create better, more fulfilling jobs, just as it has in the past.

But that is no guarantee, and there is growing evidence that this time may be different.

In a series of recent studies, Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University, two well-respected economists who have researched the history of automation, found that for most of the 20th century, the optimistic take on automation prevailed — on average, in industries that implemented automation, new tasks were created faster than old ones were destroyed.

Since the late 1980s, they found, the equation had flipped — tasks have been disappearing to automation faster than new ones are appearing.

This shift may be related to the popularity of what they call “so-so automation” — technology that is just barely good enough to replace human workers, but not good enough to create new jobs or make companies significantly more productive.

A common example of so-so automation is the grocery store self-checkout machine. These machines don’t cause customers to buy more groceries, or help them shop significantly faster — they simply allow store owners to staff slightly fewer employees on a shift. This simple, substitutive kind of automation, Mr. Acemoglu and Mr. Restrepo wrote, threatens not just individual workers, but the economy as a whole.

“The real danger for labor,” they wrote, “may come not from highly productive but from ‘so-so’ automation technologies that are just productive enough to be adopted and cause displacement.”

Only the most devoted Luddites would argue against automating any job, no matter how menial or dangerous. But not all automation is created equal, and much of the automation being done in white-collar workplaces today is the kind that may not help workers over the long run.

During past eras of technological change, governments and labor unions have stepped in to fight for automation-prone workers, or support them while they trained for new jobs. But this time, there is less in the way of help. Congress has rejected calls to fund federal worker retraining programs for years, and while some of the money in the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill Democrats hope to pass this week will go to laid-off and furloughed workers, none of it is specifically earmarked for job training programs that could help displaced workers get back on their feet.

Another key difference is that in the past, automation arrived gradually, factory machine by factory machine. But today’s white-collar automation is so sudden — and often, so deliberately obscured by management — that few workers have time to prepare.

“The rate of progression of this technology is faster than any previous automation,” said Mr. Le Clair, the Forrester analyst, who thinks we are closer to the beginning than the end of the corporate A.I. boom.

“We haven’t hit the exponential point of this stuff yet,” he added. “And when we do, it’s going to be dramatic.”

The corporate world’s automation fever isn’t purely about getting rid of workers. Executives have shareholders and boards to satisfy, and competitors to keep up with. And some automation does, in fact, lift all boats, making workers’ jobs better and more interesting while allowing companies to do more with less.

But as A.I. enters the corporate world, it is forcing workers at all levels to adapt, and focus on developing the kinds of distinctly human skills that machines can’t easily replicate.

Ellen Wengert, a former data processor at an Australian insurance firm, learned this lesson four years ago, when she arrived at work one day to find a bot-builder sitting in her seat.

The man, coincidentally an old classmate of hers, worked for a consulting firm that specialized in R.P.A. He explained that he’d been hired to automate her job, which mostly involved moving customer data from one database to another. He then asked her to, essentially, train her own replacement — teaching him how to do the steps involved in her job so that he, in turn, could program a bot to do the same thing.

Ms. Wengert wasn’t exactly surprised. She’d known that her job was straightforward and repetitive, making it low-hanging fruit for automation. But she was annoyed that her managers seemed so eager to hand it over to a machine.

“They were desperate to create this sense of excitement around automation,” she said. “Most of my colleagues got on board with that pretty readily, but I found it really jarring, to be feigning excitement about us all potentially losing our jobs.”

For Ms. Wengert, 27, the experience was a wake-up call. She had a college degree and was early in her career. But some of her colleagues had been happily doing the same job for years, and she worried that they would fall through the cracks.

“Even though these aren’t glamorous jobs, there are a lot of people doing them,” she said.

She left the insurance company after her contract ended. And she now works as a second-grade teacher — a job she says she sought out, in part, because it seemed harder to automate.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/business/the-robots-are-coming-for-phil-in-accounting.html

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The Bon Appétit and Reply All saga shows how far behind we still are in Australia

2021/03/06 Leave a comment

Interesting:

The editor of a well-known food publication resigns after numerous staff speak out about an alleged toxic work culture where people of colour are underpaid, underrepresented in senior roles and regularly face racism.

The team behind a wildly successful podcast decide to launch a new series investigating what happened. But halfway through the series the producers are themselves accused of contributing to a toxic work culture where people of colour are alleged to be underpaid, underrepresented in senior roles and regularly face racism. Key staff suddenly quit, the podcast is suspended, apologies are issued and everyone following the story is left dazed and confused.

Welcome to the Bon Appétit / Reply All saga.

What’s been playing out over the past few weeks and months is the culmination of a reckoning in US media workplaces that accelerated in the wake of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. 

And it’s a reckoning that shows how far behind we still are here in Australia.

Bon Appétit, a monthly magazine published by media giant Condé Nast, has long been one of the most popular and influential food publications in the world. But it was in 2014, under the leadership of then editor Adam Rapoport that the outlet turbocharged its online presence and became a digital media powerhouse by creating fun, engaging and helpful cooking shows on YouTube, making stars out of staff who had largely remained behind the scenes.

When the pandemic hit and Americans were confined to their homes, the magazine’s YouTube channel had its biggest ever month, attracting a mammoth 77m views in March alone.

But just a few months later the magazine was rocked by a controversy that it’s still struggling to recover from.

The killing of George Floyd sparked global protests demanding racial justice, and the media was among the institutions put under the spotlight. In an Instagram post, Bon Appétit aligned itself with the Black Lives Matter movement but staff quickly accused the publication of hypocrisy, alleging they were subject to racism in the workplace.

Sohla El-Waylly, one of the most popular presenters on the magazine’s YouTube channel, accused the company of only paying its white staff for appearing in online videos. Condé Nast denied the allegations, but a number of senior staff said they would stop appearing on YouTube until pay equity concerns were addressed.

Like the US, Australia also has a deep history of structural racism embedded in our institutions

Then an image of Rapoport in brownface surfaced, leading to his resignation. Soon after, three other presenters, all people of colour, resigned. The magazine was in turmoil. A broader reckoning across the US media followed.

It was a strange thing to observe from Australia. Like the US, Australia also has a deep history of structural racism embedded in our institutions. But there was no comparative reckoning in our media organisations.

While the Bon Appétit drama was playing out in the US, the ABC’s flagship current affairs program featured an all-white panel discussing Black Lives Matter, the Melbourne Press Club elected an all-white board of 20 people, the most-read columnist in the country blamed the spread of Covid-19 on “multiculturalism”, the Age newspaper published an editorial asserting Australia did not have a history of slavery, and the list goes on.

While there have been some minor reforms in some of these areas, there was nothing like the wave of resignations and apologies we saw in the US.

Which brings us to Reply All. The podcast was founded by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman in 2014 and described itself simply as “a show about the internet”.

In February the show shifted gears and announced it would be airing a new series called The Test Kitchen examining what happened at Bon Appétit, through exclusive interviews with former staff. The series was presented by Sruthi Pinnamaneni, a senior producer on Reply All.

The first episode of the series felt deeply cathartic. Pinnamaneni allowed those who had been marginalised, undervalued and mistreated to talk about their experiences on their terms. The series was accessible without being patronising. People of colour who had similar workplace experiences could relate, and white audiences could understand.

The “original sin”, as Pinnamaneni put it, was the decision by Rapoport to only hire white people in senior management roles. According to her, that decision is where the other problems – the racialised pay inequality, the everyday racism faced by staff – stemmed from.

It did occur to me that on that metric of an all-white leadership team, pretty much every news organisation in Australia deserved its own racism expose.

And that’s exactly what was being remarked upon in group chats across the country, full of journalists who worked at those organisations. I lost count of the number of people who messaged me saying that this exact story, the story being told on The Test Kitchen, could be done about their own media workplace. Many described it as triggering, and some said they didn’t even want to listen to avoid being re-traumatised over their own experiences.

After the second episode of The Test Kitchen aired, it was Reply All’s turn to face the music.

Eric Eddings, a former staffer at Gimlet, the company that produced Reply All, publicly accused Pinnamaneni and Vogt, one of the co-hosts of the show, of contributing to the same kind of toxic work culture that they were reporting on.

In particular, Eddings said that Pinnamaneni and Vogt had actively opposed efforts to form a union at the company, an organising push that was focused on pay inequality and mistreatment of staff who weren’t white.

Pinnamaneni and Vogt apologised and announced they were stepping away from the podcast.

Last week it was announced that the show had been suspended and no more episodes of The Test Kitchen would air. The show’s remaining original co-host, Goldman, said that the decision to make the series was a “systemic editorial failure”.

It was an extraordinary and abrupt conclusion to a story about two of the most popular and influential media organisations of their time.

While some listeners have applauded the apology from Goldman, others have interpreted the decision to cancel the series as a cop-out and pointed out that the former Bon Appétit staff who bravely told their stories publicly deserve better than an unfinished production subsumed by its own internal chaos.

In his apology, Goldman said Reply All should never have delved into this story. It’s an interesting question. There were clear warning signs that perhaps Reply All didn’t have the experience of self-awareness to undertake such a thorough examination of race.

In the first episode, Pinnamaneni admitted that it was only after the Black Lives Matter movement reignited last year that she understood for the first time how racism manifested in the workplace.

“If you’d asked [me] what does it mean to be an Indian woman in the workplace, I would’ve said it’s mostly fine,” she said. “Back then, I didn’t really want to think of my race as a disadvantage. Like I preferred to focus on how it actually helped me.”

It was a reminder that being a person of colour doesn’t automatically give you the authority or experience to explore complex racial dynamics, especially when as an Indian migrant to the US, she isn’t subject to the same kinds of oppression as the black colleagues who criticised her.

Reply All could have covered this story, but they couldn’t do it without acknowledging their own complicity and lack of self-awareness.

As depressing as elements of this saga have been, particularly the decision to not go ahead with finishing The Test Kitchen, it perhaps counterintuitively shows progress is being made. Powerful people in charge of influential institutions were forced to acknowledge their racism and apologise for it. Twice.

But looking on from here in Australia, I’m still waiting for the day our media organisations have enough staff who aren’t white to actually warrant a racism scandal

Source: The Bon Appétit and Reply All saga shows how far behind we still are in Australia

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Cherokee Nation Strikes Down Language That Limits Citizenship Rights ‘By Blood’

2021/03/06 Leave a comment

Of note:

The Cherokee Nation’s Supreme Court ruled this week to remove the words “by blood” from its constitution and other legal doctrines.

The words, added to the constitution in 2007, have been used to exclude Black people whose ancestors were enslaved by the tribe from obtaining full Cherokee Nation citizenship rights.

There are currently some 8,500 enrolled Cherokee Nation members descended from these Freedmen, thousands of whom were removed on the Trail of Tears along with tribal citizens.

“The Freedmen, until this Cherokee Nation Supreme Court ruling, they couldn’t hold office, they couldn’t run for tribal council and they couldn’t run for chief,” says Graham Lee Brewer, an editor for Indigenous affairs at High Country Newsand KOSU in Oklahoma. “And I would argue that that made them second-class citizens.”

Black Freedmen and their descendants have long fought to maintain their citizenship rights, which were stripped from them in 2007 with the “by blood” amendment.

Monday’s ruling calls those words “a relic of painful and ugly, racial past” and draws comparisons to the lingering effects the racist Jim Crow laws had on Black Americans.

The decision comes after a federal judge ruled in 2017 that by excluding Freedmen from its citizenship rules, the Cherokee Nation violated a treaty it signed in 1866 with the U.S. government. The treaty granted citizenship to the formerly enslaved people.

Brewer, who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, explains that citizenship rights grant access to services such as tribal health care, scholarships, housing programs and more. For many descendants of Freedman, he notes, the Cherokee Nation health care system is their only option for health care.

“So the discussion about removing them from the citizenship status, it wasn’t just a citizenship question, it was a civil rights question,” he tells All Things Considered.

Here are excerpts from the interview.

What other legal implications, what other cultural implications are might flow from this change?

This really makes it possible that someday, a descendant of a Freedmen could be the chief of the Cherokee Nation. It would really illustrate the strength of tribal sovereignty because our citizenship laws are not based on race. They are based on community and belonging. And so it’s much more than just the “amount of Indian blood that runs in your veins.” It’s what community do you claim, and what community claims you?

As a member of the Cherokee Nation yourself, how do you find yourself feeling?

It was just such a relief to see that Supreme Court decision come down. And as someone who reads a lot of court documents for work, I would argue it was one of the most beautifully written ones I’ve ever read. It’s just really great to finally see the tribe fully and legally embrace the Freedmen. Their descendants went through some of the most horrific and just violent history that we did of genocide in this country. And I think they have every right to share in our prosperity today.

You said this is one of the most beautifully written rulings you have ever read. Is there a line or two that stands out?

On war-torn soil in Indian Territory during Reconstruction, thousands of miles from their respective homelands, the heartbeats of three First Nations, the Cherokees, the Shawnees, and the Delawares, and three continents of flesh tones and cultures, Native Americans, African Americans and adopted or intermarried European Americans, were forced to coalesce and weave together a single nation to be known by only one name henceforth: the Cherokee Nation.

Source: Cherokee Nation Strikes Down Language That Limits Citizenship Rights ‘By Blood’

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Douglas Todd: The ‘diversity’ beat is full of surprises, often conservative

2021/03/06 Leave a comment

Todd’s personal reflections on his beat:

“Migration, diversity and spirituality writer.” That’s how my signatureblock describes my beat specialties.

The “diversity” tag draws some funny reactions. I once went on a radio talk show where the host joked about it. To him “diversity writer” sounded like liberal-virtue signalling — conjuring up the dream of people of diverse creeds and colours sitting around campfires singing Kumbaya in mutual harmony.

While I quite like the song Kumbaya, as well as the ideal of intercultural harmony, covering the diversity beat for decades has led to the discovery of scores of surprising ethno-religious realities. The diversity beat offers a great journalistic ride for anyone who is curious, since, after all, the word diversity means “a range of different things.”

Source: Douglas Todd: The ‘diversity’ beat is full of surprises, often conservative

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