Valid approach to target foreign nationals currently working or studying in the USA:
In the difficult, bewildering days right after Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, then-vice-president Joe Biden made a quick trip to snowy Ottawa for a state dinner.
It’s worth remembering what he told Canadian leaders at the time: Canadians and Americans are deeply united in their values, Biden said, especially “the abhorrence of the abuse of power, whether it’s physical, economic or political, as well as the notion that every person deserves to be treated with dignity.
“It’s about dignity.”
The words were probably meant to console Canadians as much as to console himself at the turn of events and the coarsening of politics that a Trump victory would surely herald.
Fast-forward four years, and the day after the 2020 election was equally bewildering for many Canadians who could not digest the fact that, regardless of who the eventual president is, about half of American voters chose Trump for a second time.
But when we’re done reeling over the stark, pervasive divisions within the American electorate and move on to grappling with what next, perhaps we can put our own appreciation of dignity to good use, and make it work to our advantage — through immigration.
Just last week, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino set out a very ambitious plan for Canada: to boost immigration to never-seen-before levels and pull the country’s economic growth out of its funk.
“We are at a unique juncture in Canadian history. We are facing the challenge of our generation, and we will meet our moment,” Mendicino said. “Before the pandemic, our government’s goal to drive the economy forward through immigration was ambitious. Now, it is simply vital.”
Canada will aim to bring in 1.2 million new immigrants over the next three years, partly to make up for lost ground during the pandemic but also raising the target substantially from previous plans. Instead of 351,000 people targeted for 2021, Ottawa is now aiming for 401,000. Instead of 361,000 in 2022, Ottawa hopes for 411,000.
For sure, there are many reasons to increase immigration. Family reunification and a safe haven for refugees are what dignified, decent countries do. But since the federal government’s overriding goal is to boost the economy, it’s time to take a strategic look at the U.S. landscape.
Of course, the move-to-Canada idea was all the rage after the 2016 election, and especially after Trump kicked off his term in power by cracking down on immigrants from specific countries — a move that prompted Justin Trudeau to famously tweet #WelcomeToCanada because “diversity is our strength.”
The Canadian dream bubbled up again on Wednesday in the media and on social media.
But initial efforts over the past few years to recruit large numbers of skilled immigrants from the ranks of disaffected Democrats didn’t really materialize.
We have a second chance this time around and can take steps, and have money, to make it happen.
“There is an opportunity there,” says Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo who specializes in immigration and labour.
Not all immigration automatically boosts Canada’s pace of growth, which is why Mendicino is putting more weight on the economic class of immigration than on family reunification and refugees. The hope is that by attracting skilled workers from other countries, Canada can expand the population of entrepreneurs, consumers, taxpayers, homebuyers, hard workers and wealth contributors in our economy.
People educated in the United States come with easily recognized credentials and are a quick fit into Canada’s labour market.
“If you want to leverage immigration for economic growth, you have to look at talent,” Skuterud says.
But Canada has long had stiff competition from the Americans next door in attracting those people, he adds, pointing to research that shows skilled immigrants to the United States prospering while those with a similar profile in Canada have struggled with lower wages.
Canada’s best bet to attract highly-skilled immigrants from the United States is to look there for foreigners and migrants, especially students and recent graduates, since they’re usually more mobile than the rest of the population, says Skuterud.
If Canada is to bolster growth over the long term, not just to recuperate from the pandemic but also to improve our standard of living and our ability to care for the most vulnerable in our society, we will need to make some bold, strategic moves to make our mark.
So much of Canada’s policy and recovery from the pandemic is in slow motion right now, waiting to see where Washington lands and how the U.S. political dynamic washes over the border.
Immigration is one area where we have already dared to stick our neck out and go our own way, at least in the targets and the rhetoric that comes from our political leaders. Dignity looks like a selling point these days.
Needed discussion and questioning of the 2021-23 immigration plan given the economic and social context:
Canada’s ambitious plan to admit 1.2 million immigrants over the next three years sparks discussion on the nation’s ability to accommodate this surge.
It is hard to find anyone who doubts Canada’s need for immigrants, the only point of disagreement seems to be the number of immigrants Canada admits each year.
In September, the Department of Immigration’s annual tracking study found that four in 10 Canadians believed immigration quotas were too high, and 52 per cent of the surveyed agreed with the statement that “Canada should focus on helping unemployed Canadians rather than looking for skilled immigrants for our workforce.”
This poll obviously wasn’t taken into account because last week Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marco Mendicino announced a plan to bring in 1.2 million new immigrants over the next three years — a historic high for the country.
Few would argue with the need to bring in around 300,000 immigrants annually, but increasing that number at a time when 1.8 million people in Canada are officially categorized as unemployed (as of September) has taken many aback.
It seems to me that apart from politicians, immigration consultants, manufacturing and business associations, there is little appetite among many Canadians for high levels of immigration during an economic crisis brought about by COVID-19.
The rationale offered by Minister Mendicino is that since the pandemic struck, immigrants and international students played a prominent role as front-line workers in grocery stores, warehouses and in long-term care facilities.
Very supportive of high immigration numbers is the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters association, who are on record stating that the immigration numbers for the next three years were too modest given the shortfall of admissions in 2020.
As the Business Council of Canada President and CEO Goldy Hyder said in a statement, “There is widespread agreement across party lines that immigration is essential to long-term economic growth. Newcomers bring energy, skills, new ideas and entrepreneurial spirit. They start companies, fill skill shortages, buy houses and pay taxes.”
The reality of the job market
According to StatsCan, as of August, there were still 2.2 million unemployed people in Canada. The unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 69 was 11.3 per cent. As of September, it hovered around nine per cent.
But Canada’s unemployment rate would likely be much higher had it not been for the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), which has ensured that employers continue to keep on their rolls 3.7 million Canadian workers.
The CEWS will continue until June 2021, after which a spike in unemployment is a distinct possibility. Most companies across the country are restructuring their businesses, reducing staff and investing more in automation.
Amazon, one of Canada’s largest employers, with 21,000 full- and part-time staff, as well as its rivals are increasingly requiring warehouse employees to get used to working with robots. Amazon alone now has more than 200,000 robotic vehicles it calls “drives” that are moving goods through its delivery-fulfilment centres around the U.S. That’s double the number it had last year and up from 15,000 units in 2014.
It is quite likely that in a matter of years, most manufacturing companies and warehouses here in Canada won’t be needing more than a few dozen workers to oversee the robots.
Another big employer, Loblaws, began investing heavily in artificial intelligence and automation at the company’s offices, distribution centres and stores in 2019.
So, it is quite possible that those politicians and mostly small-business owners who are up at night worrying about impending labour shortages are not taking into account the rapid pace at which artificial intelligence and other technologies are expected to significantly reduce their staffing needs.
Working from “home” could mean anywhere
Thousands of employees working at some of Canada’s top companies are expected to work from home even after the pandemic passes. Technological improvements over the past year has made it possible for any company to outsource an even greater number of jobs.
There is little stopping a company from hiring a software engineer anywhere in the world and giving him or her the option of working from “home” without setting foot in Canada. Technology makes “attracting” the best brains and talent from around the world possible on a scale that could never have been imagined.
Immigration has historically been a convenient way to address labour shortfalls which could last for decades, however in today’s fast-changing economy, it may not be wise to bring in permanent residents to essentially do jobs that are expected to become redundant in a matter of years.
By 2034, immigration will account for 100 per cent of Canada’s population growth, as the number of deaths is expected to exceed the number of births. There will have to be a steady influx of immigrants, but not in the numbers we see today. While most Canadians have been led to believe that fewer immigrants would lead to the collapse of the economy, perhaps one could point to Japan which is facing a steep population decline. In 2014, its population was 127 million and is expected to shrink to 107 million by 2040. Not wanting to stoke xenophobia, the government has not resorted to mass immigration despite a growing labour shortage. There is more acceptance of automation and robots than for immigration and companies are automating at record speed.
At some point in the near future, Canada will have to become more creative when it comes to dealing with its labour shortages.
A case to calibrate immigration with the economy
There is plenty of evidence that in previous Canadian recessions new immigrants suffered high rates of chronic unemployment and underemployment, sometimes with lasting effect — a phenomenon referred to as the “scarring effect.”
For example, immigrants who had been in Canada for less than five years preceding the 2009 economic downturn suffered job losses at a rate far more than their Canadian-born peers. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, several visible minority groups have significantly higher rates of joblessness, such as South Asian (17.8 per cent), Arab (17.3 per cent), and Black (16.8 per cent) Canadians.
Whether Canada sinks deeper into recession after government subsidies dry up in mid-2021 or rebounds is anybody’s guess. Public hostility toward immigrants could rise and xenophobes could blame them for worsening a bad economic situation when immigrants themselves could well be hurting more than the average out-of-work Canadian.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, minced no words in his recent diatribe against his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. “Macron needs mental treatment,” Erdoğan said. This blast from Ankara came in response to Macron’s announcement of a series of measures intended to “reform” the practice of Islam in France and end “Islamic separatism” – proof, to Erdoğan, that Macron had “a problem with Islam”.
Then, just five days later, on 29 October, a newly arrived Tunisian immigrant killed three Christians at prayer in Nice. France had yet again been the victim of “an Islamist terrorist attack,” Macron proclaimed. He did not need to remind his countrymen of the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by another immigrant, this one of Chechen descent, in broad daylight two weeks earlier, or of the prior stabbing of two people outside the former offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The execution of Paty, the murders in Nice, and the Paris stabbings are just the latest in a series of attacks that have claimed the lives of 260 French citizens since 2012. No one can deny that France has a terrorism problem.
Erdoğan, keen to distract from Turkey’s economic difficulties, chose to characterise France’s defensive response as an attack on “millions of members from different faith groups.” But Erdoğan is hardly the only critic of France in the Islamic world. Demonstrations against France’s supposed “anti-Islamic” stance, as well as boycotts of French products, erupted in Bangladesh, Qatar, Lebanon, and other majority-Muslim countries.
For quite different reasons Macron is taking criticism from inside France as well. His critics on the right are portraying him as soft on terror. Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, called for “changes to the constitution” to facilitate “waging war” on terror. With characteristic hyperbole, Éric Ciotti of the Republicans declared that “for the first time since the occupation, France is no longer free! Our country is at war! … We must annihilate the Islamists!”
Calls for a suspension of civil liberties, as in wartime, are growing louder by the day, despite the fact that sweeping powers accorded to the authorities in previous “temporary” states of emergency remain in effect. Yet such measures can do little to ferret out lone-wolf jihadists with no known connection to organised radical groups.
Meanwhile, critics on the left, such as Clémentine Autain, charge the French president with “trampling liberty and democracy underfoot”. But the left is hardly united in this view: the former Socialist prime ministers Bernard Cazeneuve and Manuel Valls believe that the far left, besotted by multiculturalism, blithely underestimates the Islamist threat. More strident critics accuse Autain and her allies in Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party of “Islamo-leftism” and even “complicity” with jihadists.
On the far right, Marine Le Pen has gleefully congratulated Macron for accepting her “common sense” view of “Islamism” as the implacable enemy while accusing him of “mistaking saying for doing”. Cynics on all sides insist that Macron was aping Le Pen’s stance so as to steal her thunder should she mount another presidential challenge in 2022.
Yet Macron’s early October speech on “Islamic separatism” can hardly be characterised as Le Pen-inspired. He tried to trace a careful path through the ideological minefield, but emotions unleashed by the ensuing atrocities soon wrested control of the debate from his hands.
In truth, however, his attempt to frame the issue narrowly, as simply a matter of redrawing the line traced between religion and state by the French law of 1905, was never likely to succeed. As Jean Birnbaum explained in Le Monde: “It is impossible to understand jihadism without reasoning, as the jihadists do, on an international scale.” Macron did briefly evoke the global context of the struggle, but only to shift all responsibility to the Muslim side, describing Islam as a religion “in crisis”: “Tensions between fundamentalisms, between truly religious and political projects” were to blame, he argued, while saying nothing about the long history of conflict between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds.
If Erdoğan was later able to grotesquely twist the French president’s words into an attack on Muslims generally, he was aided by the ambiguities of Macron’s all-too-cursory diagnosis. The disparity between the lofty rhetoric of Macron the political thinker and the more martial tones of the commander-in-chief also helped. The president exhorted his “defence council” that “Islamists must not be allowed to sleep tranquilly in this country.”
True, this change in tone came after Paty’s barbarous beheading, when emotions were running high, but Macron’s pugnacity tended to erase any goodwill he had previously earned with his frank recognition in the October speech that the Republic was not blameless in creating the dilemma it has been dealing with for decades: “We have constructed our own separatism,” he said, “in our neighbourhoods, creating ghettos, at the outset with the best intentions in the world – but we let it happen … We concentrated misery and difficulties, and we know it.”
When it came to proposing remedies, however, Macron played down France’s responsibility, perhaps because he had already rejected an ambitious approach that he himself had once advocated. Early in his presidency he had assigned Jean-Louis Borloo to look into the problems of France’s suburban ghettos only to dismiss the report submitted in 2018. He did briefly acknowledge one key element of the Borloo report, conceding that “radical change” was needed in France’s social housing.
He devoted much more attention, however, to the alleged shortcomings of Muslim schools and mosques, sports clubs, and fraternal circles, emphasising the kind of minutiae that the administrative state excels at regulating: foreign funding of Islamic schools would be cut off, French universities would train and license imams and teachers of Arabic, halal meals would be banned from school cafeterias, no municipality would be allowed to offer separate swim times for men and women in its pools, and home schooling would be prohibited.
Yet regardless of what such small-bore regulatory measures may accomplish, it is hard to believe that they will do much to advance the other aspects of Macron’s five-point programme, namely, to create an “enlightened Islam” in France and “to make the Republic once again beloved” by its citizens.
What Macron has failed to notice is that these two tenets stand in opposition to each other. To “enlighten” religion is to quench the passions of faith with cool reason, while inflaming patriotic passions with talk of war achieves precisely the opposite. The best way to defeat impassioned jihadists might just be to demonstrate by example that cooler heads can indeed prevail, even in the face of repeated provocation and jingoistic reaction.
The disjunction between the president’s philosophical flights and his more mundane regulatory agenda unfortunately leaves him defenceless against those who, like Ciotti, see no alternative to “annihilating” the enemy. But then again, with the passionate declaration écrasez l’infâme!, the enlightenment extolled by Macron had its own anti-religious war cry: “crush the vile thing”.
• Arthur Goldhammer is a writer, translator, and senior affiliate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University
Lou Janssen Dangzalan is an immigration lawyer who works with home care workers, healthcare workers, and international students.
Possible expansion of Express Entry stream for caregivers?
Last week, Migrant Rights Network, an advocacy group advancing the cause of migrant justice, published a report titled Behind Closed Doors, which documented the challenges faced by Canada’s foreigncare workers. The abuses are not new, but the pandemic has made them worse: accounts ranged from gruelling 12-hour work shifts with no days off, to wage theft. Some involved workers barred from leaving their employer’s house – becoming virtual prisoners – for fear of bringing COVID home. As these temporary-work permit holders depend on their employers to secure permanent residence (PR), they generally do not speak up.
The report advocates PR status for all migrant workers, which would give them more options to work for other employers, but it’s unlikely that this will happen owing to the current high bar to qualify. But there are concrete steps the government can take to prevent these abuses by creating clear and predictable pathways to permanent residence for our care workers.
Many governments in the past have unsuccessfully tried to find a solution to the abuses faced by migrant care workers, who will endure mind-boggling abuses for PR status because this allows them to bring their family to Canada These abuses remain a black eye on Canada’s reputation as a country that claims to uphold human rights and fight modern-day slavery.
The Live-In Caregiver Program introduced in 1992 allowed a foreign national to apply for PR after working in Canada as a caregiver for two years. It remained until 2014, when the Harper government introduced two pilot programs – Caring for Children and People, and Caring for People with High Medical Needs – to address the abuses that had started to be uncovered by the media. These pilots removed the “live-in” requirement, meaning that caregivers were no longer required to reside with their employers, which was thought to be one of the major causes of abuse. The Harper pilots also introduced higher language and education requirements.
Confused with all the changes? So are the caregivers – and there’s more. The latest occurred in 2019, when the Trudeau government implemented new pilots: Home Child Care Provider, and Home Support Worker. These programs prescreen would-be caregivers for permanent residence before they receive their work permits. The purpose is to sift out caregiver candidates who would not qualify for PR through some form of inadmissibility. They also implemented an interim program designed to eliminate the backlog from the legacy Live-In Caregiver Program. However, the Interim Pathway for Caregivers’ introduction was abrupt and it was open only for two brief windows of three months each in 2019, and did not clear the backlog. Reintroducing this program in a meaningful way would address that problem and buy the government some time to put together a more effective immigration program for caregivers.
Today, the Trudeau pilot programs prescreen caregiver applicants for permanent resident status, allowing workers who complete the two-year program to quickly qualify. However, this new requirement is leading to longer processing times. PR screening requires a stricter security, background, and health check compared with those applying for a work permit. Depending on the visa office in a caregiver’s home country,the time added to process an application could be in the order of months, or worse, years. This renders the programs untenable for most employers. Someone who needs a caregiver cannot wait that long.
Two days after the release of the Migrant Rights Network report, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino announced Canada’s plan to welcome 1.2 million permanent residents in the next three years. As the government will undoubtedly have trouble fulfilling its ambitious target of 400,000 new PRs in 2021, they should prioritize those who are already in Canada, including caregivers, who do not enjoy PR status. Such a move would increase Ottawa’s chance of meeting that target.
A clear and sustainable long-term caregiver program must be developed. Government must do away with flimsy pilot programs that only confuse our caregivers. There is a clear demand for caregivers in Canada and the vocationdeserves its own permanent place in the immigration system.
One approach would be topiggy-back the caregiver program under the Express Entry system. Express Entry, Canada’s main intake system for economic immigration, is seen as a huge success, especially from the government’s perspective. The government can create a class or program under the system similar to the Federal Skilled Trades program and ensure that there are caregiver-specific Express Entry draws from the general pool of candidates.
This would create predictability and transparency in the system. Successful government programs already exist that can serve as blueprints to ensure quick deployment. Mr. Mendicino has shown an openness to revamping our immigration system in the face of once-in-a-century challenges such as COVID. If he succeeds in finding a tenable solution to the caregiver immigration mess, it would be a legacy he would leave that ends decades of abuses, exploitation and failed pilot programs.
Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor in the department of communication and rhetorical studies at Syracuse University and an author on polluted information, says that all of this is making our brains go haywire.
With the U.S. election ginning up misleading information and the nonstop political discussions online wearing many of us out, I spoke to her about how we can individually and collectively fight back. Here are edited excerpts from our discussion:
When our brains are overloaded, and we’re confronted constantly with upsetting or confusing information, it sends us into a state in which we’re less capable of processing information. We say things we probably shouldn’t. People get retweet happy. It’s not productive, even when people have good intentions and think they’re helping.
How do we stop that process?
I’ve been researching how mindfulness meditation processes can help us navigate this information hellscape. When you see or read something that triggers that emotional reaction, take a moment to breathe and try to establish some emotional space. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say the critical thing you’re thinking, but you should first reflect on the most constructive thing to do next.
But we don’t tend to think that we’re the ones acting irresponsibly or irrationally. We think the people who disagree with us are irrational and irresponsible.
Most people think if they’re not setting out to do damage or don’t have hate in their hearts, then they don’t have to consider what they do. But even if we aren’t vicious ourselves, we’re still fundamentally a part of what information spreads and how.
We all affect the ecology around us. Bad actors like high-profile influencers can scar the land, but everyone else does, too. The more information pollution there is in the landscape, the less functional our democracy is. If you feel that everything is terrible and everyone lies, then people don’t want to engage in civic discourse.
This imposes a lot of personal responsibility on a problem that is much bigger than us as individuals.
Yes, individual solutions are not enough. We all can make better choices, but that means nothing if we’re not also thinking about structural, systemic reasons that we’re forced to confront bad information in the first place.
What are those structural forces? What can be done to make the information environment better at the structural level?
For us to understand how bad information travels we have to think about all the forces that contributed to it — decisions made by the internet platforms, broader capitalist forces, local and national influences. And it includes you. All of them feed into each other.
Part of the problem is that people haven’t understood how information works or recommendation algorithms of social media companies that influence why we see what we do online. If people understand, they can imagine a different world and they can fight to change the system.
I’m tempted to unplug the internet and go live in a cave. Should I?
We need to find a way to balance between evacuating from the hurricane and running toward the hurricane. If we only evacuate, we’re not doing our part as citizens, and we force people on the informational front lines to bear that burden. If we only run toward the storm, we’ll burn out.
Useful reminder. Canada, of course, separated Indigenous children from their parents in residential schools:
On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee released a 550-page report confirming that the Trump Administration had “full knowledge that hundreds of children would likely be lost to their families forever” as a result of its 2018 “zero tolerance” policy. This discovery directly contradicts Administration officials’ repeated denials that “zero tolerance” intentionally separated families—the insistence that what happened to children was nothing more than a side effect of the decision to prosecute adults for unlawful entry.
Now, 545 children are still living with the consequences of “zero tolerance,” more than two years after its implementation. These minors still have not been reunited with their parents. President Trump has demonstrated no urgency to reunite these families and has even brushed aside concern by insisting that children were “so well taken care of” in immigration custody.
Despite the apparent novelty of this policy, this is not the first time undocumented children have had to endure prolonged family separation, lone deportation or relegation to the foster care system. About 40 years ago, authorities separated families and lost track of children. Nor is this the first time government officials have obscured such a situation—a fact that offers dual lessons for the present about how to reconcile competing accounts of immigrant treatment.
In the 1970s and ’80s, at a moment when the law numerically restricted Latino immigration while poverty and violence constrained young people’s lives in Mexico and Central America, the face of unauthorized immigration changed dramatically to include growing numbers of women and children. The Immigration and Naturalization Service responded by stepping up its enforcement efforts. This hardening of the U.S.-Mexico border, the U.S. government’s preference for refugees fleeing communism and growing desperation among migrants contributed to the explosion of the coyotaje(human smuggling) business.
In a bid to thwart the increase in unauthorized migration, the Immigration Service in the late 1970s started to prosecute individual coyotes in court as a matter of policy. This decision did little to hold accountable well-resourced smugglers, who could secure bail within a single day of arrest. Instead, as authorities attempted to gather “material witnesses” against coyotes, the decision caused what the Midwest Coalition in Defense of Immigrants deemed “a violation of the most elementary human rights of children”: the mass imprisonment of thousands of Mexican and Central American minors, and the separation of families.
In 1979, when 340,00 immigrants were arrested at the border, more than 8,000 were children and 600 of them served as witnesses. In the late 1980s, the government incarcerated about 5,000 children a year and used 900 as witnesses in a single year. Immigration authorities resorted to incarcerating the women and children based on the erroneous belief, which is still untrue even today, that undocumented immigrants do not show up for scheduled court appearances if released from detention.
Their very incarceration frequently involved physical separation, since non-English-speaking children and their adult relatives were held on separate floors of detention centers, causing widespread confusion and fear. It was not until the Obama Administration built family detention centers that the government had the infrastructure to incarcerate entire families together.
Immigration and prison officials of the time forcefully denied that children were being separated from their parents or, in some cases, that they were even being imprisoned. A prison warden in San Diego told reporters for the San Diego Union that, “we have never separated children under 10 years old from their parents.” The District Director of the Immigration Service in 1980 denied incarcerating young children at all or “releasing” them to authorities in Mexico “or other Hispanic nations” unless the government could establish contact with an adult responsible for them.
Not only did the denials indirectly confirm the separation of older minors from their families, but human-rights defenders, journalists and detained migrants on hunger strikes also brought press attention to cases of newborns kept in prisons and young children separated from their parents.
Apprehended children were asked to choose between remaining inside the same detention centers that held their parents or separating from their families to get assigned to unrelated foster parents, who volunteered to sponsor the children through local Catholic institutions under contract with the U.S. Marshals Service. In 1979, government officials publicly depicted this program as a “humane effort to solve the problem of illegal aliens,” but privately acknowledged in manuals for the program that, “most foster children are disturbed by separation from their family.”
In one especially egregious case reported on by the L.A. Times, 4-year-old Orlando from El Salvador was separated from his mother, Ana Margarita, for an entire year and sent to a foster home until a protracted legal battle won their reunion.
Other 4- and 5-year-olds were separated from their families to gather intelligence about coyotes. One Border Patrol officer in El Paso, Texas, touted to a New York Times journalist that “if you browbeat them [the young children] enough, tell them ‘We’re going to leave your mama locked up forever if you don’t tell us the truth,’ the kid’ll tell you everything” about their border-crossings.
When parents remained incarcerated to serve as “material witnesses,” their children were sometimes deported alone to northern Mexico. According to the Committee on Chicano Rights and firsthand accounts obtained by the L.A. Times, some of these youths ended up being arrested and thrown into overcrowded Tijuana juvenile detention facilities. Beyond being subjected to a double criminalization, apprehended child deportees were beaten by guards and tortured by Mexican police—tragedies not unlike the violence faced by asylum-seekers pressured into deportationand forced to “Remain in Mexico” today.
Critics charged that no serious effort was made on the part of the government to reunite parents with children who had been “lost” to the federal bureaucracy, thus permanently separating families who lacked the resources to wage drawn-out legal battles.
This little-known moment of family separation and child detention offers a warning for today, as advocates work to make sure the 545 un-reunited children are not forgotten: government narratives about the treatment of undocumented children and families have long been unreliable, and official statements must be considered alongside testimony from immigrants and their advocates. Otherwise, the full repercussions of draconian immigration policies might not be conspicuous to the public until the damage to families has long been done.
Historians’ perspectives on how the past informs the present
Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez is a U.S. history Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University specializing in the 20th century legal history of child migration. Outside of the academy, she has conducted research on child migration for the federal government and non-profits in the U.S. and Mexico.
Virtue signalling during the pandemic, when Quebec has some of the highest per capita infection and death rates worldwide:
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet is doubling down on efforts to draw a line separating his party’s values from those of the Trudeau Liberals — particularly on the fraught ground of free speech.
Blanchet posted a tweet Sunday suggesting Justin Trudeau’s response to attacks in France that authorities have attributed to Muslim extremists did not go far enough, and highlighted what the Bloc leader called a “disturbing gap” in values that he chalked up to possible “weakness” or “ideology” on the prime minister’s part.
Blanchet said in French that Trudeau is threatening Quebec’s friendship with France. He’s sought to align his province with that country’s “republican and secular” principles, contrasting them with what he called an “Anglo-Saxon multiculturalist doctrine.”
Last week, Trudeau condemned the attacks in France as “heinous” acts of terrorism that fly in the face of Canadian values and said Ottawa “would always defend freedom of expression, but freedom of expression is not without limits.”
“In a pluralistic, diverse and respectful society like ours, we must be aware of the impact of our words, of our actions on others, particularly these communities and populations who still experience enormous discrimination,” Trudeau told reporters in French on Friday.
At a press conference today, Blanchet argued that Trudeau’s comments suggested “extenuating circumstances” might explain some acts of terrorism.
“My duty is to tell our sisters and brothers and friends in France that Quebec does not share this opinion being expressed by the prime minister of Canada,” Blanchet said.
French attacks
Three attacks in France over the past two months have come amid a growing furor over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were republished by the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
Extremists attacked the Charlie Hebdo newsroom in January 2015, after the caricatures were first published, and killed 12 people.
Since their reprinting in September at the start of the ongoing Paris trial over the killings, France has endured three attacks blamed on Muslim extremists.
One saw two people injured outside the newspaper’s old headquarters, allegedly by a teenage refugee from Pakistan.
On Oct. 16, a teacher name Samuel Paty was beheaded outside his school for opening a class debate on free speech by showing students the caricatures.
And on Thursday, a knife-wielding man attacked and killed three people in a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice.
At his press conference today, Blanchet accused the Trudeau government of being slow to condemn the attacks. Blanchet said Quebec’s National Assembly passed a unanimous motion condemning the attack on Paty and lamented the fact that the House of Commons chose only to observe a moment of silence.
Last month, the Bloc pushed the government for a response to a controversy over a university instructor’s use of a racial slur in class, demanding that the Liberals state unequivocally whether they support the professor involved.
Blanchet said those subjected to hateful words deserve compassion and support, but using the term in an educational context isn’t bigoted.
Trudeau had told the House of Commons that “we all need to be conscious of the power of our words.”
MPs vote down Bloc motion on October crisis
Blanchet spoke about freedom of expression at a news conference this afternoon ahead of a House vote on his motion demanding an apology from the government for having invoked the War Measures Act during the October Crisis in Quebec 50 years ago.
That vote failed by a vote of 263 to 56. Liberal and Conservative MPs voted against the motion, while most NDP MPs joined their Bloc counterparts and voted in favour.
In October 1970, the Liberal government under then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau chose to suspend civil liberties by invoking the statute then known as the War Measures Act in response to the kidnapping of a Quebec cabinet minister, Pierre Laporte, and a British diplomat by members of the militant FLQ separatist group.
The move, which came at the request of the Quebec premier and Montreal’s mayor, led to soldiers patrolling the streets as authorities rounded up hundreds of residents under suspicion of involvement in the abductions.
The three Green MPs also voted in favour of the Bloc motion, despite a statement released by the party’s leader, Annamie Paul, that criticized it for politicizing a tragic historical event.
“If the objective of the motion is to produce healing and reconciliation related to the events of October, 1970, then it is wrong to introduce a motion that fails to mention the assassination of Mr. Laporte and the impact on his loved ones, does not mention the Quebecers who were injured and terrorised during the bombings attacks carried out during that period, nor acknowledge the role played by the government of Quebec in invoking the War Measures Act,” said Paul.
“Likewise, in responding to the motion, it is wrong for the government to solely mention the horrific assassination of Mr. Laporte, without acknowledging the federal government’s role in the arbitrary arrest and detention of innocent Quebecers under the War Measures Act.”
Paul said she’s proud of the Green Party’s tradition of not whipping votes.
Meanwhile, Quebec’s highest court today began hearing a legal challenge to Quebec’s secularism law — known as Bill 21 — which bans public school teachers, government lawyers and police officers, among other civil servants, from wearing religious symbols at work.
Blanchet has been a steadfast supporter of the law, while opponents argue it disproportionately targets Muslim women and is therefore unconstitutional.
PSES data supports the view that the government has considerable work to improve the workplace organizational culture to reduce harassment and discrimination for both visible minority and Indigenous groups.
Black employees report being a victim of discrimination the most, generally and with respect to race and colour. But all groups report significantly higher discrimination than all employees, according to data analyzed by Andrew Griffith.
Following the 2019 Employment Equity Report provision of disaggregated representation for visible minorities, Indigenous people, and persons with disabilities, the 2019 Public Service Employee Survey (PSES) similarly lays out these breakdowns for the four employment equity categories along with LGBTQ2 persons, to assess whether or not the public service is inclusive to all groups.
With the availability of disaggregated data, we now can compare the experiences of different visible minority and Indigenous groups, using the helpful summary tables available at Open Data.
For ease in analysis, I have separated indicators pertaining more to organizational culture (employee engagement, senior management, workplace well-being, empowerment, career development, diversity and inclusion) from those of personal experience (harassment and discrimination).
Figure 1 contrasts the results for the 22 organizational culture questions for women, visible minorities, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities (PwD) and LGTBQ2, highlighting those with a variance of five per cent better or worse compared to all employees. Overall, the major issues appear to be with respect to PwD across virtually all indicators followed by Indigenous employees with respect to diversity and inclusion. Visible minorities and LGBTQ2 are largely similar to all employees, with the exception of higher stress due to discrimination for visible minorities. However, visible minorities also indicated being more satisfied with senior management and less stressed after the workday.
Figure 2 compares the harassment and discrimination indicators across the categories. The results are as one would expect for each category. While visible minorities are comparable to all employees with respect to harassment, they are more likely to have encountered discrimination based on their race, ethnic origin, colour, or religion. Indigenous people are more likely to feel excluded and encounter discrimination based on their race. Once again, PwD are more likely to encounter harassment, whether being subject to excessive control, being excluded, humiliated or encountering interference in their work, and being discriminated against in their disability. LGBTQ2 people encounter more sexual comment or gesture harassment, along with greater discrimination on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Visible minorities
Figure 3 contrasts the responses for the different visible minority groups for the organizational culture indicators compared to all employees. Generally, employee engagement indicators show comparable results across all groups to all employees with minor variations. Most groups are more satisfied with senior management than all employees, particularly with respect to information flow. Workplace well-being indicators are generally more positive than for all employees, with the notable exception of harassment- and discrimination-induced stress. While empowerment indicators generally are similar to all employees, Black, Japanese, and Korean feel the least empowered. Career development indicators are also generally comparable, with the exception of more negative perceptions by Japanese, Black, South Asian, and West Asian employees responding that discrimination has adversely affected their career progress. While diversity and inclusion indicators are generally comparable across groups, Japanese employees have the lowest satisfaction along with Black employees regarding support for a diverse workplace.
Overall, Filipinos have the highest levels of satisfaction of all groups consistently across all indicators.
Figure 4 contrasts the responses for the different visible minority groups for the harassment and discrimination indicators compared to all employees. Black, Filipino, and Chinese employees report lower harassment for most indicators than other groups. Aggressive behaviour is highest among some Asian groups, along with yelling or shouting. Perceived unfair treatment is common to most groups, save Filipino and Southeast Asian.
Overall, Japanese employees report the greatest harassment and least satisfaction regarding harassment resolution and Filipinos the least harassment and greatest satisfaction with resolution, followed by Chinese employees.
Black employees report being a victim of discrimination the most, generally and with respect to race and colour. But all groups report significantly higher discrimination than all employees, whether by race, ethnic origin or colour, save for West Asians/Arab. However, Southeast Asian and West Asians/Arab report high levels of religious discrimination, most likely related to Islam. Interestingly, both Chinese and Southeast Asian employees report higher levels of age discrimination, and family status discrimination is highest among Japanese. Discrimination resolution satisfaction is highest with Filipinos and lowest with Black, Japanese, Latin American and mixed.
Indigenous groups
Figure 5 contrasts the responses of the three Indigenous groups for the organizational culture indicators compared to all employees. Overall, Inuit have higher levels of satisfaction across the vast majority of these indicators, with Métis having the lowest levels with respect to employee engagement, the highest work-related stress and the lowest levels of empowerment. North American Indian/First Nations and Métis employees rate the psychological health lower than all employees and all three groups report higher levels of discrimination-induced stress.
Figure 6 contrasts the responses with respect to harassment and discrimination. All Indigenous groups report harassment over the past 12 months, being excluded or ignored. Inuit have higher rates of being humiliated or being subject to offensive remarks while Métis report being subject to excessive control and personal attacks. Only Inuit are satisfied with harassment resolution while Métis are least satisfied. With respect to discrimination, all have experienced higher levels of discrimination than all employees, with very high levels based on race for First Nations and Inuit and high levels with respect to nation or ethnic origin. As in the case of harassment resolution, only Inuit are as satisfied as all employees while Métis are least satisfied.
While it appears that the experience of visible minorities is worse than Indigenous peoples, PSES data supports the view that the government has considerable work to improve the workplace organizational culture to reduce harassment and discrimination for both visible minority and Indigenous groups. This needs to take place at the general and the specific group levels by each department given the variances between the individual groups.
As in the case of disaggregated data with respect to employment equity groups, the increased granularity of the PSES provides a richer evidence base for managers and human resources to develop measures to improve inclusion in the public service at the departmental and organizational levels.
Have been following the various reactions to date regarding the government’s (overly) ambitious targets for the next three years. Relatively few op-eds and commentary, possibly due to the focus on COVID and the US presidential election which are taking up most of the oxygen.
And much of the commentary focusses overly on the administrative issues, not the more substantive issues related to economic integration of immigrants during an economic recession, one that is likely to linger for a few years.
Have grouped these by constituency:
Business-oriented
The plan was welcomed by the business sector.
“There is widespread agreement across party lines that immigration is essential to long-term economic growth,” said Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, which represents some of the country’s largest businesses.
“Newcomers bring energy, skills, new ideas and entrepreneurial spirit. They start companies, fill skill shortages, buy houses and pay taxes, … The minister’s plan will allow Canada to make up lost ground as the pandemic eases. It will inject new dynamism into our economy.”
The Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters even went one step further, saying Ottawa’s objectives were too modest and will not allow the country to catch up quickly enough over the coming months to compensate for the reduced number of immigrant admissions this year.
“Manufacturers are increasingly using immigration to supplement their workforce but there are not enough immigrants to meet the demand,” said Dennis Danby, its president and CEO, who represents 2,500 leading manufacturers in the country.
“If manufacturing is to be at the core of the economic recovery following the COVID-19 crisis, we must do more in prioritizing immigration from the economic stream.” (Toronto Star)
As Canada’s leading voice on smart population growth, Century Initiative continues to advocate not just for increasing our population, but for policies to support that growth through investments in education and in the national and urban infrastructure that will allow our communities to grow in a sustainable manner. We also need to prioritize supporting parents with a national childcare strategy, and our children with early education programs.
Now is the right time to invest in growing our population. Environics Institute’s recent Focus Canada survey shows that a record two-thirds (66%) of Canadians reject the idea that immigration levels are too high, and that Canadians recognize the critical contribution immigrants make to our economy and our social fabric. We have a tremendous opportunity before us and welcome the opportunity to continue working with gover(nment to seize it in the interest of future generations of Canadians. (Century Initiative)
Opposition critics
Opposition MPs took aim at the way the government has handled immigration throughout the pandemic and questioned how the new targets would be achieved.
Conservative immigration critic Raquel Dancho said the government is announcing new levels without a plan for how they will be safely implemented.
Jenny Kwan, immigration critic for the NDP, said she believes the numbers are “a bit of a hoax” because the backlog to process applications is so great that the targets will be hard to meet.
Christine Normandin, the Bloc Québécois immigration critic, said in French that Ottawa is taking the opposite approach to the Quebec system. She said the province takes only as many immigrants as it can process in one year, while Ottawa sets goals without taking into account its capacity to do the paperwork. (Globe)
That lower-end target is actually below the low end of the number of immigrants, pre-pandemic, the Liberals had planned to admit in 2021, pointed out NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan.
“The Liberals demonstrate a lack of conviction in their targets and left the door wide open for immigration levels to decrease,” she said in a statement.
It’s also not clear how unused room is being carried over.
For example: the Liberals had planned to admit 49,000 refugees this year. Next year, according to Friday’s plan, they are aiming for 59,500.
While that looks like an increase of 10,000, the number of refugees who have actually arrived in the first eight months of this year was down nearly 60 per cent from 2019 arrivals.
So it’s possible that the 2021 figures merely incorporate the shortfall from this year, as opposed to being an overall increase. Mendicino wasn’t clear when asked about that issue Friday. (Canadian Press)
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said the government must not overlook the compassionate aspects of the immigration system, such as removing travel restrictions for asylum seekers and ensuring permanent residence status for migrant workers in recognition of their contributions during the pandemic.
“The immigration department’s processing abilities is still spotty at best and serious investment in staffing, far beyond what we’ve seen so far, is needed,” said Kwan.
“Without these investments, applicants are to expect significant increases in processing times for years to come, which were already long before the pandemic.” (Toronto Star)
Tweets from CPC critic Dancho:
The Liberals have failed to layout a plan to bring in newcomers to Canada safely. No widespread access to rapid tests and the 14 day quarantine is not a financial option for many people. #cdnpoli https://twitter.com/RaquelDancho/status/1322270115921055746?s=20
They have no plan to better resource immigration department to fulfil the levels promised. Liberals are simply adding to their massive, years-long immigration backlogs that fail to provide potential newcomers with certainty, dignity or respect. #cdnpoli https://twitter.com/RaquelDancho/status/1322270117384851456?s=20
The ministers announcement did not acknowledge the economic devastation caused by COVID-19 or the hundreds of thousands of Canadians facing unemployment since the pandemic hit and how these new ambitious immigration numbers will impact them. #cdnpoli https://twitter.com/RaquelDancho/status/1322270118290903040?s=20
International organizations
Either way, that Canada even continues to open its arms is welcome, said Rema Jamous Imseis, the UN refugee agency’s Canadian representative.
“In an era of travel restrictions and closed borders, refugees continue to be welcomed by Canadians,” she said in a statement.
“The significance of this lifeline and the deep generosity of Canadians cannot be overstated.” (Canadian Press)
Academics
While experts had expected Ottawa to stay the course with its immigration goals — given the government had publicly stated immigration would be key to restarting the post-COVID-19 economy, they were surprised the Liberals would decide to take it up a notch.
Although critics have raised concerns about high immigration given that the country’s jobless rate hovered at nine per cent in September — after peaking at 13.4 per cent in May — from 5.6 per cent before the pandemic, some experts say the government is on the right track.
“The timing for expanding the program now is good. But I’m surprised how high the targets are they have set. I don’t know how realistic it is from a bureaucratic administrative perspective,” said Carleton University economist Chris Worswick, who specializes in the economics of immigration.
“I commend the government for thinking about immigration again. I was worried that it wouldn’t happen. I wonder if they’re being too ambitious. I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll end up at a good place.” (Toronto Star)
Immigration lawyers and advocates
Immigration and refugee experts welcomed the move to grant permanent residency to those already in the country.
“I’ve always thought, even before COVID, that it makes a lot more sense to target people who are already educated here, or have work experience here, or at least have lived here. … These are people who are already demonstrating their genuine interest in Canada,” immigration lawyer Chantal Desloges said.
Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said her organization has urged the government to give permanent residency to those in Canada.
“What we need to see is that realization actually reflected in actual operations, actual policies, because at this point, the way the Immigration Department is working is running in completely the opposite direction,” she said. (Globe)
Contrary to what the government is saying, there is NO INCREASE in IMMIGRATION LEVELS. Instead, there was a 150,000 shortfall in immigrants in 2020, and the government is trying to catch up for it by increasing 50,000 each year for the next three years. But as COVID-19 continues, these promises are unlikely to be kept.+
The overall proportion of new immigrants remain the same, with the primary focus on “high waged” immigrants. However, to qualify for these immigration programs, migrants must show 12-24 months of high-waged work. With COVID-19-related job losses disproportionately impacting racialized people, many migrants don’t have access to these jobs and won’t qualify. No plan has been announced to ensure full and permanent immigration status for all migrant and undocumented people right now.+ Many migrants — including care workers and former international students — were not able to complete requirements for permanent residency in 2020 due to COVID-19. However, there is no meaningful increase in numbers on fixing of rules for these migrants in today’s announcement. (Migrant Workers Alliance)
On the right
Recent polls have shown that Canadians are weary about increasing immigration levels in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
A poll commissioned by True North found that an overwhelming 76% of Canadians strongly agreed with the idea of a temporary pause until a coronavirus vaccine is developed and unemployment drops to pre-coronavirus levels. Note: Polling firm unknown and thus is not credible
The poll results show a surprising consensus among political parties as well with 67% of Liberals wanting to impose a temporary pause, 66% of NDP voters and 89% of Conservatives.
“Given today’s global circumstances of a public health pandemic and severe economic crisis, now is the perfect opportunity to revert back to our successful historic immigration model, listen to the majority of Canadians, and take another pause,” True North’s founder Candice Malcolm wrote when the poll was released.
“It’s time for our leaders to listen to the people and do what’s best for our country.” (“True” North)
While the government touted the need for migrants to strengthen the economy, the unemployment rate in Canada, the unemployment rate currently stands at 9%, from an all-time high of 14% in May. Over 8 million Canadians applied for emergency COVID relief benefits in the form of the CERB. Canada’s unemployment rate was around 5% prior the pandemic. (Rebel Media)
