Does COVID-19 mean the age of global migration is over?

2020/08/18 Leave a comment

Good overview of one of the more significant papers on immigration post-COVID by Alain Gamien that policy makers need to consider and reflect upon:

Is the age of migration coming to an end?

For decades, easy air travel, globalization and international competition for talent in some sectors have made the growing movement of people around the world seem unstoppable.

Until now.

With the pandemic leading to less demand for skilled labour, a smaller aging population to support, and a proliferation of travel restrictions, the future of human migration looks pretty grim post-COVID-19.

“We have had the migration boom, now we are heading into the bust,” said Alan Gamlen, a human geographer at Monash University in Australia and author of a new paper about the outlook of migration, Migration and mobility after the 2020 pandemic: The end of an age?

If Canada’s immigration numbers between April and June — the first full quarter under the influence of the pandemic — are any indication of what is to come, things don’t bode well.

According to a new study to be released later this week by the Association for Canadian Studies, the number of permanent residents admitted to Canada dropped by 64 per cent to 34,260 in the second quarter of 2020, compared to 94,275 during the same period last year.

Those who came under the skilled economic class fell a whopping 52 per cent to 24,805 from 51,665; the family class is down 78 per cent to 5,990 from 27,080; and resettled refugees and protected persons declined by 83 per cent to just 2,685 from 14,570.

While much of that is due to border closures, experts say it’s not immediately clear if the downward trend will be totally reversed once travel restrictions are eased.

In his paper, released in August as part of the International Organization for Migration’s “think series,” Gamlen posed ten key questions that guide future migration and mobility trends.

The No. 1 question on the list is whether countries will need less labour migration.

Unemployment has skyrocketed during the pandemic. With corporate borrowing at a historic high, Gamlen said many companies now lack the revenue to service debt and are either folding or cutting staff.

The net result will be a reduction in demand for migrant labour, with a large pool of unemployed domestic workers and mounting political pressure to hire them over migrant workers.

“It is hard to find grounds for much optimism regarding the short- to medium-term outlook,” Gamlen told the Star.

“We will continue to see dependence on migrant labour in certain sectors of the economy, particularly at the high and low ends of the skills spectrum. This is because some sectors involve work that native workers can’t or won’t do, and because innovation will remain a key driver of prosperity.”

Further complicating the forecast is the uneven death toll COVID-19 has taken on the elderly population, a group that’s particularly vulnerable to the virus as seen in the death rates around the world.

“If high mortality rates persist until a vaccine can be mass produced, the overall death toll could amount to a significant portion of the elderly cohort,” said Gamlen, a long-standing research associate at Oxford University’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society.

“If the pandemic devastates a specific generation, it will affect long-term dependency ratios and dynamics of demographic transition. It could reduce the proportion of dependent elderly people in the population and the financial cost of aged care, while generating a boom of babies conceived in lockdown.”

Places where people can move freely to another country by choice will likely see a decline in those rates as they put their migration plan on hold, but the traditional labour-sending countries in the developing world will see a “buildup” of people longing to leave their homelands, said Gamlen.

“The interaction of these changing flows from different places will, I think, lead to a period of unstable, non-linear changes in migration patterns,” he argued.

“The overall volume will decrease, but flows might be less predictable — like when you turn the kitchen tap halfway off, and the water starts spraying out sideways instead of flowing nicely down into the sink.”

Gamlen said it’s inevitable that the numbers of people crossing borders, especially on a permanent and long-term basis, will fall further before they bounce back — if they ever do.

“A huge amount depends on how governments manage all this. They will have a lot of control over when and how borders start to reopen and their choices in this regard will affect both the recovery timeline from the pandemic and from the economic crisis,” he said.

“Opening too early could reignite the spread of the virus. Opening too late could stifle growth and lead to a new era of closed-shop nationalism — which has ended very badly in the past.”

In its immigration study, the Association for Canadian Studies polled 1,531 Canadians between July 31 and August 2 about their attitude to immigration. Forty-six per cent of respondents still believed immigration would have a very positive or somewhat positive impact on Canada while 26 per cent of people held the opposite view.

Given the pandemic, 36 per cent of the respondents said Ottawa should prioritize the admission of those with family members in Canada, followed by refugees (16%), temporary foreign workers (12%), skilled immigrants (8%) and international students (7%).

Jack Jedwab, the academic association’s president, said whether the pandemic will mark the end of migration depends on how long the contagion lasts.

“Canadians seem comfortable with the reduced numbers and are still positive about the impact of immigration and committed to immigration as a strategy for medium to long term economic growth,” Jedwab said.

“But it is not clear when the medium term will occur. The contagion does not provide us with a time frame. There will be a need to reassess the needs regarding immigration given the economic uncertainty and what the changing circumstances call for.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/08/17/does-covid-19-mean-the-age-of-global-migration-is-over.html

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Canada’s federal security and intelligence establishment encouraging employees to self-identify

2020/08/18 Leave a comment

Further to the earlier Hill Times story. Having gone through some of the recent reports (still awaiting a few), my general observation is the lower the representation numbers, the longer the reports and the more words describing the various initiatives underway). That being said, their cultures are different from elsewhere in the public service and thus the challenges greater:

A number of organizations in Canada’s security and intelligence establishment, including the Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Community, the Department of National Defence, and the Canada Border Services Agency have been conducting campaigns to encourage employees who belong to one of the four designated groups listed in the Employment Equity Act—women, Indigenous people, members of a visible minority, and people with a disability—to self-identify, as part of their efforts to improve data collection and hiring practices.

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, composed of 11 MPs and Senators and chaired by Liberal MP David McGuinty (Ottawa South, Ont.), focused on diversity and inclusion issues in the security and intelligence community in its most recent annual report.

The report notes that one of the challenges in the security and intelligence committee surrounds voluntary self-identification.

But the report also notes that “self-identification campaigns and internal communications are [a] way organizations try to increase awareness on these issues,” and that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and the Department of National Defence (DND) have conducted campaigns to “demystify the self-identification process and encourage employees to self identify.”

The Hill Times reached out to the four organizations noted in the report for more information on how they have done that.

Communications Security Establishment

Diversity and inclusion is an important element in ensuring that the Canadian security and intelligence community can effectively protect Canada, said Ryan Foreman, a media relations representative with the Communications Security Establishment (CSE).

Mr. Foreman outlined a number of initiatives undertaken by the CSE to encourage self-identification, including a 2017 push to increase organizational awareness of the requirements of the Employment Equity Act, and to explain how a diverse workforce strengthens CSE’s ability to deliver on its mandate.

“This included providing data to managers, and developing strategies to attract job applicants from underrepresented groups,” said Mr. Foreman, who also noted that CSE launched a self-identification campaign called “Show us what CSE is made of,” which was designed to encourage employees to self-identify.

“The messaging for this campaign communicated the importance of employment equity data and its impact on other organizational initiatives, such as recruitment and training,” said Mr. Foreman. “Both the 2017 initiative and the self-identification campaign started in 2018 are on-going.”

Canadian Security and Intelligence Community

“As Canada’s security and intelligence service, it is critical that CSIS reflects the communities it protects, wrote CSIS spokesperson John Townsend in an email to The Hill Times. “To this end, CSIS has implemented an ongoing internal communications campaign to encourage employees who belong to one of the four designated groups listed in the Employment Equity Act to self-identify.”

“The campaign includes an annual Employment Equity questionnaire among other tools to advise employees on the importance of self-identification.”

Ninety per cent of CSIS employees have engaged with these tools, according to Mr. Townsend.

“The work of making CSIS more representative of Canada is never finished but our commitment is steadfast and our efforts continue,” wrote Mr. Townsend.

Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces

Staff at the Department of National Defence and members of Canadian Armed Forces have returned self-identification forms at a greater rate this year than in the past, thanks to organizational efforts to spread the word about the importance of self-identification, according to Major Smyth, spokesperson for DND.

The Employment Equity Act requires that every member be provided the opportunity to self-identify as a member of a designated group, but it remains voluntary to do so.

As such, employment equity representation rates are based on a voluntary process and may not represent the actual employment equity representation in CAF, according to Mr. Smyth.

“Overall, the CAF continues to improve upon its self-identification return rates,” said Mr. Smyth. “The first part of the self-identification form is a personal identification portion. For this portion, the regular force achieved its highest return rate yet with 97.5 per cent of [members] having had the opportunity to self-identify as a member of a designated employment equity group.”

“While the return rates are lower in the primary reserve units, the CAF saw an overall increase in self-identification as designated group members from both regular force and primary reserve members compared to 2017/18.”

“Current representation rates, as of July 2020, for the regular force and the primary reserves combined, were as follows: women, 16 per cent; visible minorities, 9.3 per cent; and Indigenous Peoples, 2.8 per cent.”

DND/CAF did not identify the representation of persons with disabilities as of July 2020 in their response to The Hill Times.

The CAF works closely with Statistics Canada to ensure that “labour market data they provide, and upon which the CAF sets its employment equity representation rate goals, is reflective of the unique occupations and employment criteria of the CAF.”

“DND/CAF is committed to reflecting the Canadian ideals of diversity, respect and inclusion. Both long and short term goals have been created, based on the labour market analysis provided by Statistics Canada. We review our progress regularly to ensure that we are always working towards increasing representation rates,” said Mr. Smyth.”

Canadian Border Services Agency

The Canada Border Services Agency’s campaign encouraging self-identification began in 2017 and was repeated in 2018, according to Jacqueline Callin, spokesperson with the agency.

“They stressed the importance of understanding our workforce composition and reinforced that employee information would be protected. Recognizing that the Agency’s manual process might be contributing to response rates of 61 per cent, an online form was piloted with success in 2019 and was set to be launched in March 2020 as part of our ‘Your Voice Matters’ campaign. It has been postponed due to the current COVID-19 pandemic and current efforts are focused on how best to virtually promote self-identification,” she said.

Employment Equity Act ‘has served Canada and the public service well,’ says expert

Andrew Griffith, who is the former director general for Citizenship and Multiculturalism and has worked for a variety of government departments in Canada and abroad, told The Hill Times that the Employment Equity Act has served Canada and the public service well, and that the diversity of virtually every group has increased since the act was introduced.

“So the basic structure of the act, I think, has worked in the reporting structure and the data collection, and the publicity that comes with the results,” said Mr. Griffith, who is a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and Environics Institute.

“But if you re-open the act, I’m just not sure that it’s worth all that much effort, time, and invariable divisiveness and controversies that it will raise,” said Mr. Griffith. “I’m thinking that if you want to use government time wisely, it would be more effective, I would think, [to look] at specific anti-racism initiatives and look at some of the specific barriers rather than a wholesale of revision of the act, because I think the challenge is less with the act and more with some of the practical stuff.”

Source: Canada’s federal security and intelligence establishment encouraging employees to self-identify

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Looming Fee Increase Could Thwart Many U.S. Citizenship Applications

2020/08/18 Leave a comment

Yet another Trump administration anti-immigration initiative. Cost matters, and fees need not to pose an excessive financial burden on immigrants:

When Guadalupe Rubio, 41, contracted the coronavirus in July, she struggled to make the few steps to the bathroom in the mobile home that she shared with her teenage daughter in Kent, Wash.

The pandemic had already shuttered her small construction business, which also provided for her parents and three children in Sinaloa, Mexico. Now, the virus left her struggling to breathe, trapped inside without any means to support the six family members who depended on her.

Around the time the pandemic hit Washington State, Ms. Rubio became eligible to apply for United States citizenship. She made a bit too much money to qualify for a reduction in the application fee, currently $640, and the economic effects of the pandemic and her illness sapped away her savings. She applied for food stamps, a benefit that could also provide a break on the fee, but has so far been unable to reach the overwhelmed social services agency that could help her.

If she cannot save the money or obtain a fee waiver before the fall, Ms. Rubio’s prospects of becoming a citizen will become more remote. The Trump administration moved late last month to raise the cost of naturalization applications by more than 80 percent and to substantially tighten eligibility requirements for a subsidized application.

The price for naturalization will jump to $1,160 or $1,170 for online applications. The rule will also lower the income threshold to qualify for a fee waiver and eliminate the partial subsidy for the application.

Almost all other exceptions that allowed immigrants to waive the fee will be eliminated, including extenuating financial hardship and means-tested public benefits, like food stamps. Only some protected immigrants, including victims of domestic violence and human trafficking, will remain eligible.

Ms. Rubio is one of many who would no longer be eligible for a waiver. Immigration lawyers across the country are rushing to submit their clients’ applications to the already backlogged agency before the fee increases are introduced on Oct. 2.

“It’s a low blow during a pandemic,” Ms. Rubio said through a translator. “I have worked a lot for this country, and if I’m a citizen, I can — not just contribute more — but I can also better reap the benefits of all of my hard work in this country.”

Advocates for immigrants say the fee increase is intended to stymie legal immigration and deprive immigrants of their right to vote before the election in November.

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COVID-19’s latest victims: Would-be citizens waiting to take their oath face new delays over expired clearances

2020/08/18 Leave a comment

Appears to be a case for some flexibility on a case-by-case basis as has been done elsewhere:

The backlog and wait time for new citizenship ceremonies are bound to grow due to a new complication brought on by COVID-19.

The traditional in-person oath-taking mass ritual has already been cancelled since March as a result of public health concerns during the pandemic. As long as someone hasn’t sworn their allegiance to the country, they are still just permanent residents and are unable to vote or run for political office.

The immigration department has since slowly moved the citizenship ceremonies online.

But in the meantime, some would-be citizens who have already passed their exam and are in the queue to go in front of a citizenship judge are being told they can’t take their oath because their criminal clearances expired while they’ve been waiting for their turn.

“As required by the Citizenship Act, all citizenship candidates must meet the requirements for citizenship, including being free of prohibitions prior to taking the oath of citizenship. As such, individuals must have valid clearances in order to be permitted to take the oath,” said immigration department spokesperson Lauren Sankey.

“The criminality clearance is valid for 12 months and must be valid at the time citizenship is granted and the oath of citizenship is taken.”

According to a response to an access to information request, at least 76 virtual citizenship ceremonies were cancelled in Montreal, Greater Toronto and the Atlantic region up until the end of June as a result of expired criminal clearances.

A would-be new citizen told the Star his original in-person citizenship ceremony for March 20 was cancelled and he was then rescheduled for a virtual ceremony for June 25. But less than 24 hours before the event, he was told by email that it was cancelled because he needed a new clearance certificate.

“Getting citizenship is like being adopted by Canada. Imagine you’re in an orphanage waiting to be adopted. You met your adopted parents and they said they’d pick you up and take you home on a certain day. Before that day comes, they call the orphanage and say they can’t come,” said the American immigrant, who asked that his name not be used for fear of repercussions.

“You don’t hear anything for several months. Then less than 24 hours before the next pickup day, they call and cancel again. That’s pretty deflating there.”

The man, who moved to Toronto 12 years ago after marrying a Canadian, said he was told by his MP’s office that the citizenship application process is all paper-based. Hence, there are no automated systems warning immigration officials when a criminal clearance is about to expire.

He said he’s still waiting for instructions from the immigration department about what to do next.

Sankey said immigration officials will request new criminal checks from other federal agencies in the event clearances have expired before a citizenship ceremony.

“It is not necessary for applicants to reapply,” she said. “Once valid clearances are returned, these clients will be prioritized and rescheduled at the earliest opportunity.”

Additional delays are expected because the department depends on its partners to complete the process.

“Generally, clearances should take about a week to complete, however in the current context, our partners are making assessment on a case-by-case basis, consequently IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) cannot provide specific processing time frames,” Sankey said.

Source: COVID-19’s latest victims: Would-be citizens waiting to take their oath face new delays over expired clearances

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Knesset demands answers after some Negev Bedouin have citizenship revoked

2020/08/18 Leave a comment

Of note:

Salim al-Dantiri, a Bedouin man from Israel’s southern Negev desert, used to regularly vote in elections. As a young man, he served in the Israel Defense Forces, as did his father, his brothers and his sons.

Then, around 20 years ago, he visited an Interior Ministry office for a routine matter, only to be told by a clerk that he was in fact merely a permanent resident, that the citizenship he had enjoyed to date had been given “by mistake” and that he would have to reapply for citizenship status. He did that, so far to no avail.

“My entire family has citizenship except for me,” Salim, from the the village of Bir Hadaj, told a Knesset committee last week.

The main difference between being a citizen and a permanent resident in Israel is that the latter is not eligible to vote or obtain a passport.

Around 370,000 Bedouin live in Israel, some 250,000 of them in the Negev. Unlike most Israeli Arabs, some Bedouin, like the Druze, serve in the IDF.

Salim is an example of what the Interior Ministry confirmed in 2016 is a policy to correct “ministry mistakes” in registration. The ministry insists that it is not removing citizenship — that would evidently be illegal.

Clause 11 of the 1952 Citizenship Law states that the Interior Minister may annul a person’s citizenship only if it was obtained on the basis of false information, and was given within the previous three years. If three years have passed, an annulment can only be decided by a court.

Nobody actually knows what “mistakes” specifically were made, because the Interior Ministry has not published the information. But they apparently relate to the way in which the Population Authority initially registered the Bedouin in the chaotic, early years of the state, compounded by typing errors when clerks later computerized hand-written personal files in the 1980s.

Military rule imposed on all Israeli Arabs between 1951 and 1967 meant that movement was subject to permits and that not everyone could get to the Interior Ministry to register, if they even understood that they needed to do so.

The registration “mistakes” seem mainly to apply to groups within the al-Azazme tribe, who live in the Negev Highlands, from south of Beersheba down to Mitzpe Ramon.

Last week, MK Said al-Harumi of the predominantly-Arab Joint List party, a member of the al-Azazme himself, told the Knesset Interior Affairs and Environmental Protection Committee that beginning around 2002, efforts to review the rights to citizenship of Negev Bedouin were stepped up. That year also marked the point when the government decided to freeze providing citizenship to Palestinians on family reunification grounds.

 

From that point on, some Bedouin visiting Interior Ministry offices for any number of services, from passport renewal to replacement of lost documents, began to experience such purported “corrections”: Walking in as citizens and leaving as permanent residents. Ministry clerks simply changed their status on the computer, with no explanations given and no opportunity to explain or appeal.

“When they take a person’s citizenship away, a long journey begins without answers,” al-Harumi said. “It causes terrible suffering.”

People who lost their citizenship were unable to move beyond Israel’s borders, for example to visit Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage, he said. Nor could they exercise their right to vote.

“If their fathers or grandfathers registered in this year or that, why should they have to pay the price 70 years later?” he said.

Fellow Joint List MK Sondos Saleh added that the policy was only deepening community distrust toward authorities.

The issue first came to prominence in 2015, when Joint List MK Aida Touma-Sliman visited Bedouin villages in the Negev as chairwoman of the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality. Many there told her that they had had their citizenship taken away. In some families, one child was a citizen and another only a permanent resident.

At a Knesset Internal Affairs discussion in December of that year, the Interior Ministry confirmed the policy, while the committee’s legal adviser, Gilad Keren, challenged its legality in reference to the 1952 Citizenship Law.

Last week, at a second Knesset committee meeting held to examine whether such “corrections” were still being made, Keren said that his position had not changed.

To committee members’ bewilderment, a legal adviser to the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority maintained that “This is not about cancelling citizenship, because these people did not acquire citizenship. [For example,] a person’s file will say that he is a permanent citizen born to permanent citizens, but on the computer, he’s been mistakenly registered as a citizen.”

Senior officials from the authority admitted that Bedouin with Israeli identity cards who were found to have been descended from permanent residents would not be able to apply for a passport.

Committee chairwoman Miki Haimovitch retorted: “If you don’t issue a passport, that means you’re canceling their citizenship… There’s something twisted about people who have been citizens for years having to prove that they’re citizens. These people have not broken the law.”

Ronen Yerushalmi, Head of Citizenship at the Population and Immigration Authority, said research into the status of Negev Bedouin with citizenship had turned up 2,626 cases of questionable status. Of these, 2,124 had been confirmed as citizens, while the remaining 500 had “failed to meet the conditions” for citizenship because when they were born, neither of their parents had been citizens.

Yerushalmi said that the interior and justice ministers had agreed to deal with the issue by speeding up the citizenship application process for those who would need to apply. Out of the 500 summoned to ministry offices for the purpose, 362 had received citizenship “very quickly.” Of the remaining 140, 134 failed to respond, while six have not yet been given citizenship “for other reasons.” A Justice Ministry official insisted that “there have been no refusals so far.”

Oded Feller, director of the legal department at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, proposed that the Interior Ministry should use its authority under Clause 9 of the Citizenship Law to fix the situation. The clause enables the minister of the interior to grant citizenship for special reasons to people such as Righteous Gentiles or outstanding athletes, and to do so retroactively.

 

MK Ram Ben Barak (Yesh Atid-Telem), a former deputy director of the Mossad and former director-general of the Intelligence Ministry and the Strategic Affairs Ministry, said: “Without doubt, there is a sense of discrimination on racist grounds… In the case of the Negev Bedouin [in general], the state should first of all feel shame.

“They should be dealt with like all citizens, by whichever ministry is relevant. We’re in 2020. There are nine million citizens here. All are equal and need to be related to in an equal way,” he said.

The committee instructed the Interior Ministry to provide it with the relevant written regulations or guidelines, while Touma-Sliman vowed to build up an alternative database of cases to check whether the Population Authority figures were correct.

Source: Knesset demands answers after some Negev Bedouin have citizenship revoked

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‘Why not us?’: Asylum seekers on COVID-19 front lines demand permanent residency

2020/08/17 Leave a comment

All too predictable, the understandable debates over who’s in and who’s out, which happens with respect to most government programs, whether immigration or other:

Doll Jean Frejus Nguessan Bi says he couldn’t sleep at all last night.

The asylum seeker from Ivory Coast works as a security guard in hospitals and long-term care homes in the Montreal area, where he watched many of his colleagues stop coming in as deaths linked to COVID-19 began to mount this spring.

But while Nguessan Bi kept working, he said he found out Friday that he would be excluded from a new government program to fast-track the permanent residency applications of some asylum seekers working on the front lines during the pandemic.

“Why (not) us? We who gave our hearts and our love… Why are we abandoned?” he said in an interview at a protest camp across the street from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Montreal riding office Saturday. “What did we do to deserve this?”

Ottawa announced Friday that asylum seekers working in specific jobs in the health-care sector would be eligible for permanent residency without first having to wait for their asylum claims to be accepted, as is typically the process.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said the move came in response to public demand for so-called “Guardian Angels” — many in Quebec — to be recognized for their work.

“They demonstrated a uniquely Canadian quality in that they were looking out for others and so that is why is today is so special,” Mendicino said in an interview Friday afternoon.

But asylum seekers and their supporters say Ottawa’s plan excludes thousands of workers without permanent status in Canada who have laboured on the front lines during the pandemic, often at great personal risk to themselves and their families.

That includes security guards and janitorial staff, factory workers, and farm labourers, among others.

“I have friends who worked with me in security that abandoned (their posts) because they were afraid of getting infected. But I stayed,” said Nguessan Bi.

He said he wants Trudeau and Quebec Premier Francois Legault to do something to help asylum seekers who are not eligible for the new program.

Several dozen people rallied in front of Trudeau’s office on Saturday to demand permanent residency for all asylum seekers.

“It’s an act of recognition. They deserve status,” Joseph Clormeus, a member of Debout pour la dignite, a Montreal advocacy group that organized the rally, told the crowd.

Anite Presume, a Haitian asylum seeker who came to Quebec in August 2017 from the United States, was among the protesters.

She works in a medication factory, and said she kept working during the pandemic despite the risks.

“To take the bus, we were all stressed, but we still went to work because it was essential. They needed medication for the hospitals,” she said in an interview.

She said she has not received a response yet to her application for asylum in Canada, and lives under a cloud of uncertainty and stress about her future.

“It’s a feeling of rejection,” Presume said, about not being included in Ottawa’s regularization program. “They rejected us as if we did nothing.”

To apply for residency under the new program, applicants must have claimed asylum in Canada prior to March 13 and have spent no less than 120 hours working as an orderly, nurse or another designated occupation between the date of their claim and Aug. 14.

They must also demonstrate they have six months of experience in the profession before they can receive permanent residency and have until the end of August 2021 to meet that requirement.

The program was the result of negotiations between the federal government and Quebec, who have had a strained relationship on the question of immigration, and in particular the asylum claimants, in recent years.

Public support has been building for asylum seekers’ demand for permanent residency after it was revealed that refugee claimants were among those toiling in Quebec’s long-term care facilities, which were hard-hit by COVID-19.

Source: ‘Why not us?’: Asylum seekers on COVID-19 front lines demand permanent residency

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Mississauga Hindu temples’ outdoor hymns expose public divide during pandemic

2020/08/17 Leave a comment

Of note:

Hindu temples across Mississauga have begun broadcasting daily hymns outdoors for believers who are unable to gather in large groups and partake in three major Hindu festivals after the city granted them a noise bylaw exemption.

The exemption mirrors one made for Mississauga mosques in May, so they could broadcast a daily call to prayer during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. At the time, a small Hindu group was opposed to the idea, but now say if Muslims are allowed an exemption, they should be too.

In late April, some Mississaugans voiced strong opposition to the city’s exemption for calls to prayer. A Facebook group called “Mississauga Call to Prayer on LoudSpeaker Unconstitutional,” which had 10,445 members on Thursday, was fundraising to pursue legal action against the city over the decision after it was approved.

Canadians United Against Hate released a statement asking city council to uphold the decision, saying many of those who were putting pressure on city hall were “Islamophobic and racist elements in Mississauga.”

The community debate in Mississauga exposes a divide over public space and sounds during a pandemic when people are reluctant to gather indoors.

“Initially we opposed calls for prayers during the holy month of Ramadan,” said Rao Yenbamuri, president of Hindu Forum Canada (HFC) – a seven-member Mississauga-based not-for-profit formed in March. A May 2 letter on the group’s website called it “a violation of our secular values.”

“We think that such a precedent would not be practical in a multifaith community, that’s the reason we opposed it,” he said in an interview with The Globe and Mail, adding that despite multiple attempts to communicate with politicians, the decision went forward. “So given these circumstances, we would like the same privileges to be extended to us.”

Amira Elghawaby, a journalist and human-rights advocate who sits on the board of Anti-Hate Network Canada, said many Canadian Muslims face Islamophobia and discrimination under the guise of secularism.

“We see that happening very prominently in Quebec with Bill 21,” she said, referring to a law that prevents many public servants from wearing religious symbols at work, “and we saw it happening in Mississauga and other jurisdictions in the country when the call to prayer was permitted during the month of Ramadan because of the pandemic.”

Ms. Elghawaby also said there was no need “to create us versus them narratives” between both communities.

“I think it’s important to understand that Canada is a country of diversity and diverse raising and diverse backgrounds of people, and all of that is what makes our country strong and rich,” she said. “And we all actually get stronger when our communities are able to fulfill their identities in ways that [are] meaningful to them.”

Kushagr Sharma, a volunteer for Mississauga’s Hindu Heritage Centre, says broadcasting the hymns will help build a sense of connection for many who felt isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“A lot of seniors want to come to the temple, just to be there physically but not come inside,” he said.

“So a lot of people would come outside, do their prayers in their cars and leave. But they weren’t able to hear the hymns and the prayers that go on.”

Playing the hymns outdoors also ensures seniors and other vulnerable community members can feel safe, Mr. Sharma said. The temple is not affiliated with HFC and had no prior knowledge of its opposition to broadcasting calls to prayers during the month of Ramadan, he added.

The bylaw exemption allows the temples to broadcast religious hymns every night at 7 p.m., for five minutes, between Aug. 11 and Sept. 1.

Varsha Naik, executive director of the Regional Diversity Roundtable of Peel, and a long-time member of the Interfaith Council of Peel, said all faith communities need places where they feel safe to practise their respective religions.

“We need to ensure that nobody in the community gets isolated,” Ms. Naik said. “And especially with COVID-19, we need to create that sense of community, that sense of celebration.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-mississauga-hindu-temples-play-hymns-outdoors/

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Be prepared: The road to any change in policing will be long and arduous

2020/08/17 Leave a comment

Good thoughtful and realistic commentary by Richard Fadden,former national security adviser to the prime minister, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, deputy minister of national defence and deputy clerk of the Privy Council:

It is now beyond reasonable debate that the issue of systemic racism in our law-enforcement institutions must be seriously addressed. This is not to suggest that every police service is equally flawed, or that every officer acts unacceptably, consciously or not; indeed, we must avoid ascribing all of society’s ills to the police who serve us, lest we throw the baby out with the bathwater, and ignore how other social institutions also contribute to systemic discrimination. But clearly, the current model of policing needs to change.

Political leaders, legislators, police board members, city councils and police chiefs in Canada and the United States have acknowledged as much, and with various degrees of specificity, have said that something must be done. What that might look like remains difficult to discern. Some have suggested the abolition of some police forces altogether; that is a non-starter, and will only divert attention away from more effective ways of dealing with the issue. Defunding is a more complicated proposal; most police forces are already underfinanced, but a careful look at how public funding is being used would be a worthwhile undertaking. Some police practices likely need to be more strictly limited or forbidden, including chokeholds and carding, while new ones should be mandated. And police-training curricula should be reformed so that they’re about more than just firearm requalification and criminal-law updates; it must be disseminated repeatedly over the course of all levels of a police career, and must send the message that the coercive power of the state should always be the last resort.

But whatever the solution is, it will be important to understand that change will be profoundly difficult – indeed, far harder than any simple message being delivered – because of the closed-personnel nature of these police services.

Closed-personnel organizations are ones in which young men and women join as recruits, plan to stay for their entire careers and work toward promotion within that force (some entry at mid-level is possible, but is relatively rare). Such systems aren’t the exclusive domain of police forces; they can also be found in intelligence agencies, foreign services, the military and in many religions.

All organizations develop a culture that determines not so much what they do but rather how they carry out their work, and police services are no exception, with the culture pervading widely across this closed loop. But while police culture varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and is a function of many factors, a crucial commonality is that officers spend the majority of their time dealing with a small part of the population that the rest of us would often rather not hear about. This gives rise to a we-versus-them mentality – one that’s amplified by the closed-personnel systems and their practical requirement that members strongly support one another, often against any outsiders. The pressures of this culture of conformity and mutual support also make it difficult to operate within the structure. Policing’s hierarchical, command-and-control approach to managing and standardizing behaviour – as is required by the considerable power held by individual police officers – should make it easier to discipline “bad apples.” Instead, police culture tends to counterbalance the ability of chiefs to act.

Over the course of my career, I’ve worked with police officers from many forces. Virtually all of them impressed me with their dedication, work ethic and belief that their role was central to peace, order and good government. But I remember that most only ever wanted to discuss their good qualities; areas where improvement might be possible were rarely ever raised. With some notable exceptions, usually at the chief level, they were professionally very conservative and resistant to any suggestions from outsiders such as myself, my colleagues, or cabinet ministers.

Without a shadow of a doubt, statements to press for change by political leaders, legislators and police chiefs are necessary, but they’re far from sufficient. Consider the challenges in dealing with sexual abuse among the Roman Catholic clergy despite the views of the Pope, or the Canadian Armed Forces’ sexual-harassment crisis despite the efforts of the Chief of the Defence Staff. Indeed, it is telling that front-line officers and their unions or associations are often missing from the list of those agitating for change.

To get officers on board, organizations that work with the police should, at minimum, transparently acknowledge their own complicity in policing’s problems. To suggest that police boards, city councils, responsible ministers, Crown counsel and criminal law courts knew nothing of these appalling practices is to suggest either gross negligence or incompetence, when neither view is warranted. This broader insensitivity to systemic racism is part and parcel of the issues in our police.

Systemic discrimination or racism anywhere is an assault on what most Canadians believe and what the Charter demands. Because of how police services are organized, however, transformation is going to be arduous and slow. Police chiefs working inside their organizations cannot do this alone: a considerable amount of political capital, structural untangling and society-wide patience is going to have to be expended if the long mission ahead has any hope of succeeding.

 

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Immigrants urge government to deliver on promise to wipe out citizenship fee

2020/08/17 Leave a comment

Of note. Applications dipped to about 17,000 monthly in November and December 2019 from an average of close to 24,000 in previous months, perhaps in anticipation of fee elimination:

As the U.S. moves to hike the fee to become an American citizen, Canada plans to eliminate the cost entirely.

Yet nearly a year after the Liberals made an election campaign promise to waive the $630 fee, newcomers to Canada who are now feeling a financial pinch from the pandemic are still waiting for the government to deliver.

Faizan Malik says coming up with that amount for himself and his wife is a “big problem,” especially since he is working reduced hours and facing higher costs of living due to COVID-19. With a single income between them, and because they’re helping to support family members in his native Pakistan, he said it’s tough to put any savings aside.

“It’s kind of difficult for me to scramble that amount of money, and if it’s that difficult for me, I wonder how difficult it would be for a new immigrant or a family of four,” he said.

Malik, a Toronto-based supply chain specialist, says even if the Liberal government doesn’t waive the fee completely, he would welcome a reduction in the amount to make it more affordable.

“Right now I’m just holding my horses and waiting for the right time if something happens, otherwise it’s very difficult to file with the current fee,” he said.

Citizenship gives a person the right to vote and to obtain a passport, and provides a sense of belonging in Canadian society. Some employers, including the Canadian Armed Forces, require citizenship.

The processing fee is $530, which was increased from $100 by the previous Conservative government, plus a $100 “right of citizenship” fee.

The Liberals promised to waive the fee during the fall 2019 election campaign.

Fall campaign commitment

“Becoming a citizen allows new immigrants to fully participate in Canadian society, and the process of granting citizenship is a government service, not something that should be paid for with a user fee. To make citizenship more affordable, we will make the application process free for those who have fulfilled the requirements needed to obtain it,” reads the Liberal campaign platform.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marco Mendicino was also instructed to follow through on that promise in his Dec. 13, 2019 mandate letter. The department will lose $400 million over four years if the fee is eliminated.

The minister’s spokesperson Kevin Lemkay says the Liberal government has made citizenship more accessible by cutting wait times and loosening the language, residency and other requirements to obtain citizenship.

“Our government places great value on Canadian citizenship and is committed to removing barriers and helping newcomers achieve citizenship faster while also protecting the integrity of the program,” he said.

Lemkay said the government remains committed to bringing forward a plan to eliminate the fees, but did not offer a time frame of when that would happen.

The planned move in Canada is in stark contrast to the U.S., where President Donald Trump is nearly doubling the cost of becoming a citizen by hiking the fee to $1,170 US from $640. That, and other immigration fee changes, are scheduled to come into effect in October.

Abhishek Rawat has been “waiting anxiously” for the Liberals to waive the fee, calling it “steep” for people like him with reduced incomes due to the pandemic. Rawat, a Toronto physicist, expects the promise has fallen through the cracks because the government is preoccupied with the pandemic.”I understand the government has due process to go through before they can eliminate the fees. On the other hand just last month they raised the fees for permanent residency applications. So they can move fast if they want,” he said.

‘In Canada’s interest’

Sharry Aiken, an associate professor of immigration law at Queen’s University, urged the government to move.

“It is in Canada’s interest to naturalize newcomers as fast and as efficiently as possible once they are otherwise eligible,” she said. “For many the presence of a fee is a barrier, and they will put off applying simply for financial reasons.”

Even though fees are reduced for children, a family of four would be required to pay $1,460, which Aiken says is prohibitive for many on tight budgets.

Andrew Griffith, author, former senior immigration official and fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, favours a reduced fee over an outright elimination. But since the government has made the commitment, he said it should follow through on it.

Griffith said it could be done quickly with a regulatory change.

The markedly different course that Canada is taking compared to the U.S. underscores the sharp contrast in immigration policies, he said.

“It’s part of the government’s efforts to have an overall message that immigration is good for the country; We want to increase the levels of immigration, they’ll make a contribution both in the short term and the longer term in terms of the demographics and we want you to feel part of the country,” he said.

Source: Immigrants urge government to deliver on promise to wipe out citizenship fee

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COVID-19 Impact on Immigration to Canada: June 2020 update

2020/08/17 Leave a comment

The deck examines the impact of COVID-19 on immigration to Canada: Permanent Residents, Temporary Workers, Students, Citizenship and Visitor Visas updated with June data and web data for key programs.
Key observations:
  • Immigration continued bounce back compared to May and overall quarter save for TRs
  • PRs: From 10,950 in May to 19,180. June Year-over-year decline: Greater gap between Economic only -22.6% compared to Family -69.0%, Refugees -80.2%
  • Provincial Nominee Program: Increase from 2,970 in May to 4,940. June Year-over-year decline smaller than May: -30.9%
  • TR to PRs transition: Increase from 5,820 in May to 12,955. Year-over-year increase of 39.8% (i.e., those already in Canada)
  • TRs/IMP: Ongoing decline from 15,700 in May to 13,950. June Year-over-year decline: Agreements -51.0%, Canadian Interests -46.3%
  • TRs/TFWP: Stable— 9,365 in May compared to 9,200. June Year-over-year decline: Caregivers -64.5%, Agriculture -8.9%, Other LMIA -50.1%
  • Students: Decline from 30,785 in May to 16,000. June Year-over-year decrease: 32.8%
  • Citizenship: Increase from virtually none in May (53) to 1,656. June Year-over-year decrease: 92.0%.(2019 monthly average was about 20,000)
  • Visitor Visas: Complete shutdown. China authorizations declined faster and sharper
  • IRCC Website interest (July, Work and study permits, settlement services and citizenship) broadly reflect these trends)

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