Struggling language schools launch bid to bring 40,000 foreign students to Canada for fall semester

2020/08/01 Leave a comment

Bad idea. Economic interest of one sector, not without criticism over the quality of language training, versus the health risk to Canadian residents given that some source countries such as Brazil continue to mismanage COVID-19 with dramatic increases in infection rates:

Facing financial ruin due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s language schools have proposed an ambitious plan to bring 40,000 foreign students to Canada over the next few months to learn English and French.

The Study Safe Corridor initiative, which is awaiting approval from the federal government, would see Air Canada provide charter flights to bring COVID-screened students from countries such as Turkey, Japan, South Korea and Brazil.

A number of Canadian hotels have agreed to offer “full-service quarantine packages” for the students during their 14-day isolation period. A health insurance partner is involved in the plan as well.

The language students — who range in age from teenagers to people in their 30s and 40s — would be required to sign contracts to guarantee compliance with health regulations, which include financial penalties if rules are broken.

“We needed to come up with something that would be a game changer,” said Gonzalo Peralta, executive director of Languages Canada, which represents 200 schools across the country.

“We believe that if sports teams are allowed to function in this way, then international education should be allowed as well.”

The federal government gave the National Hockey League permission to resume its season and hold the Stanley Cup playoffs in Canada, allowing players from 18 teams from the U.S. to enter the country. The teams have agreed to follow strict safety protocols while playing in Toronto and Edmonton.

Economy would benefit, group says

Languages Canada and its members have asked the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship for the same consideration.

“We’re not looking at professional players being paid millions; we’re looking at people who are building their lives and looking toward the future,” Peralta said. “We know that borders cannot simply reopen; that’s unthinkable at this time. But we do know that life needs to continue.”

His organization says the Study Safe Corridor would inject $533 million of export revenue into the Canadian economy by March 2021, benefiting not only the schools, but also the airline and hotel sectors, homestay programs, and the tourism and hospitality industry. As well, 9,000 education jobs are at stake.A Languages Canada member survey showed that as many as 75 per cent of schools will be out of business by the end of the year if they’re not allowed to reopen. Some have already closed permanently.

Initiative raises health concerns

Emrah Oyman, executive director of operations at Toronto’s Mentora Language Academy, said online classes aren’t a suitable replacement.

“The big selling feature is the cultural component,” he said. “If you take away the face to face, you may as well just go on to YouTube.”

Oyman and his colleagues are confident that the safety measures of the Study Safe Corridor will minimize health risks. “This plan is bulletproof,” he said. “It’s very robust.”

But some are concerned about the health risks of bringing so many foreign nationals to Canada.

Dr. Anna Banerji, an infectious and tropical disease specialist who teaches at the University of Toronto and works part-time at a COVID-19 assessment centre, said she is opposed to the initiative.”The virus is surging around the world,” she said. “People are dying of this. A lot of people have sacrificed a lot to keep us safe. Why would we take the risk of people coming from all around the world into Canada?”

Part of Banerji’s work during the pandemic has been to speak with people who have tested negative for the virus but are still exhibiting symptoms.

She said she’s not reassured that students would be tested before being allowed to fly. “We have a high degree of false negatives,” she said.

In her view, language studies are not essential during a global pandemic. “These students have the rest of their lives to learn a language. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

As for the fate of the schools? “Now is not the time to do this,” Banerji said. “Maybe they can reopen next year.”

Students are keen to come

Pedro Hammer of Brazil said he is eager to return to Canada to continue his English-language classes and believes the Study Safe Corridor is a good approach.

“Especially in Brazil, we are dealing with a pretty hard situation in regard to the coronavirus, and I think the safety measures are a must,” he said via a WhatsApp call from his hometown in the southern city of Curitiba.

The 18-year-old was a student at Mentora Language Academy until February, when his visa expired. Then the coronavirus hit, and he’s been unable to renew it to return.

He said it’s his “dream” to get back to Canada.

“At the moment I arrived in Toronto, I knew it was the place for me,” Hammer said. “I fell in love with the city. It was a life-changing experience.”

Hammer is taking a business management course in Brazil but said his dream is to eventually emigrate. “My main goal is to go to Canada, to Toronto, to grow a family there and maybe grow a business as well.”

Many students are keen to resume studies, said Mentora’s Oyman.”Our day-to-day operations are heavily related to education agents when it comes to new students, and they’re all across the world,” he said.

“They’re giving us market intelligence; they’re telling us the students’ concerns. And they are absolutely receptive to the idea of the Study Safe Corridor.”

Gonzalo Peralta of Languages Canada said many foreign students opt to stay in Canada and pursue higher education. It’s another economic benefit of language schools, he said, but added that there’s more than money at stake.

“It’s also about promoting our identity to the world and our Canadian values. It’s very, very important in that regard.”

Peralta said his organization hopes to receive the go-ahead from the government soon.

“Now is the biggest time for enrolment, over the summertime. And then in September, those are the two big intakes. We have missed the summer. So this is basically the equivalent of Christmas to the retail business.”

The Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, as well as the office of Minister Marco Mendicino, did not respond to emails sent by CBC News asking for comment.

Source: Struggling language schools launch bid to bring 40,000 foreign students to Canada for fall semester

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Paradkar: Voluntourism by charities like WE is based on faulty ideals of feel-good white saviourism

2020/08/01 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

“People have gotten used to looking at Africans as objects.”

Education advocate Chizoba Imoka had just finished delivering the Hancock Lecture at the University of Toronto two years ago when she crystallized a certain rage that anyone who seeks to decolonize structures will identify with. “What gives people the confidence to think, you know, you have four weeks off and you’re just going to travel to Africa to save Africa?”

The “saving Africa” kind of volunteering occupies a hefty presence on the Canadian imagination. “Raised funds for Africa” wins praise and opens opportunities for students. “Volunteered in Africa” is a resumé builder for professionals. “But they went to Africa!” is evidence of progressiveness, a stalwart defence against accusations of racism.

“Voluntourism” is a topic that deserves scrutiny during a time when the WE Charity and its tentacular affiliates are in the news for all the wrong reasons including allegations of: messy internal finances; complex relationships among its many arms that even confuse its own staff; a non-transparent speaker system; aggressive run-ins with media; and a relationship with the prime minister that has embroiled him in another ethics scandal.

All of this comes under the umbrella of feel-good white saviourism.

This is not to say charities in general are useless; those that support grassroots organizations can make a difference. But jumping up to save others is pointless if it is primarily self-serving.

Me to We’s volunteer travel site is startlingly honest in that it does not couch the western self-centredness of its mission. “Experience a new culture.” “Get ready for a world-changing adventure.” “An unforgettable team-building experience.” “A truly one-of-a-kind family vacation.”

“It’s never really been about us,” Imoka, who keeps one foot in Nigeria and the other in Canada, told me Wednesday from Edmonton. “It’s always been about the people in the West and what their desires are and what their resumés need to look like and the pictures they need to put up on Instagram.”

The idea of westerners flying in for a couple of weeks to fix another country (while taking a once-in-a-lifetime holiday!) is breathtakingly colonial. Would we welcome planeloads of African kids coming to ogle at our lifestyles and save Canadians? White saviourism means only other people need saving, whether they be on their own lands in other continents or forced on to reserves here. It reproduces relationships premised on white supremacy.

“Getting young people to think about the world beyond themselves, that’s a noble idea,” Imoka said, but “the young white people willing to save us still think we’re the way we are because … there is something deficit about us. So we take the surpluses in the West to go fix the deficits in the Global South.”

This shouldn’t require saying but the world doesn’t actually exist in a western vision of it. People in once-rich nations don’t become poor because they suddenly got lazy or just forgot to educate themselves and keep pace with the times.

“It would be much different if you teach them about the history of the world from an anti-colonial perspective,” Imoka said. “They don’t have wells, let’s go build wells — but why don’t they have wells? What has made it impossible for kids in that community not to do so? That critical thinking that takes a lot of work.”

That critical thinking would make clear that what needs to change is not necessarily in Africa — often perceived as a monolith rather than a varied continent — but global policies here, in the West, in Canada.

Got four weeks off and want to help? Go read up on history. As Imoka had said two years ago, “Take the Canadian foreign policy as your case study to understand how the Canadian foreign policy continues to enable colonization.” Maybe write to your member of Parliament. Fight where the Africans cannot — here, in the West.

Imoka was a teenager, too, when she started Unveiling Africa Foundation, which earlier this month launched a seven-weekend African-centred history program to develop young leaders. “It takes a lot of work to be able to ask foundational questions and takes much, much more work to bring it down to teenagers’ level. It’s difficult to get Instagram pictures for that. It’s not pretty work. It’s thankless work.”

Meanwhile people are still dying, and perhaps charities need to supplement policy work with donations. Unless people are emotionally moved, they don’t part with their money. Charities push the direst situations under our noses to snap us out of our daily pillar-to-post rush. To make us feel good about giving.

But saving Africa, on whose pillaging we’ve based our comfort, isn’t about feeling good. It’s about getting to real solutions. It’s about sacrifice. It’s about supporting those doing the hard work of decolonizing in their areas of specialty.

“It takes a lot of talking and learning and planning,” Imoka said. “You need to know the people on the ground that are getting their hands dirty, working to challenge structures, working to hold their political leaders accountable.”

Solidarity could also mean holding our own leaders accountable.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2020/07/30/voluntourism-by-charities-like-we-is-based-on-faulty-ideals-of-feel-good-white-saviourism.html

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Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System: A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency

2020/08/01 Leave a comment

Most comprehensive list I have seen to date, with the assessment that some of these will ensure given the comprehensive and interlocking nature of the changes:

Through bold, sweeping changes as well as less-noted technical adjustments, the Trump administration has dramatically reshaped the U.S. immigration system since entering office in January 2017. Now well into its fourth year, the administration has undertaken more than 400 executive actions on immigration, spanning everything from border and interior enforcement, to refugee resettlement and the asylum system, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the immigration courts, and vetting and visa processes. This reports offers a comprehensive catalog, by topic, of those actions, including their dates and the underlying source materials.

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 gave the administration new openings to push forward many of its remaining immigration policy aims. This period has seen bans on travel and a pause on visa issuance for certain groups of foreign nationals and a further closing off of the U.S.-Mexico border that has effectively ended asylum there.

Much of the White House’s immigration agenda has been realized in the form of interlocking measures, with regulatory, policy, and programmatic changes driving towards shared policy goals. Though these largely administrative actions could, in theory, be undone by a future administration, this layered approach, coupled with the rapid-fire pace of change, makes it likely that the Trump presidency will have long-lasting effects on the U.S. immigration system.

Source: Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System: A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency

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Auditor-General to probe lapse in Canada’s pandemic warning system

2020/07/31 Leave a comment

Needed:

Canada’s Auditor-General is planning to investigate what went wrong with the country’s once-vaunted early warning system for pandemics after the unit curtailed its surveillance work and ceased issuing alerts more than a year ago, raising questions about whether it failed when it was needed most.

Sources close to the matter said the Auditor-General is planning to probe the government’s handling of the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, or GPHIN, which was a central part of the country’s advance surveillance, early detection and risk-assessment capacity for outbreaks.

The Globe and Mail reported on Saturday that a key part of GPHIN’s function was effectively shut down last spring, amid changing government priorities that shifted analysts to other work. According to 10 years of documents obtained by The Globe, the system went silent on May 24 last year, after issuing more than 1,500 alerts over the past decade about potential outbreaks including MERS, H1N1, avian flu and Ebola.

GPHIN was part of Canada’s contribution to the World Health Organization. Those alerts often helped Canada, the WHO and other countries assess outbreaks at their earliest stages to determine the urgency of the situation. It was responsible for alerting the WHO to the first signs of several potentially catastrophic events, including a 2009 outbreak of H1N1 in Mexico, a 2005 flare-up of bird flu in Iran that the government there tried to hide, and the 1998 emergence of SARS in China.

According to federal documents, “approximately 20 per cent of the WHO’s epidemiological intelligence” came from GPHIN. But sources from inside the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) said the analysts were stripped of their ability to independently issue alerts in late 2018. Those alerts, which had garnered GPHIN a global reputation as a leader in pandemic intelligence, had to be approved by senior management, a move that ultimately silenced the system.

Several past and present employees told The Globe that the government had grown wary of GPHIN’s mandate in recent years, believing it was too internationally focused, given that pandemic events were rare. Analysts were given domestic projects to focus on that didn’t involve global surveillance, and the operation’s early-warning capacity soon suffered. Over the past decade, doctors inside Public Health also began to fear their messages weren’t being heard, or understood, on important topics, the employees said, which affected Canada’s readiness for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Auditor-General is also planning to look at Canada’s risk assessments during the pandemic, which may have affected the speed and urgency of mitigation measures, such as border closings, airport shutdowns and the use of protective masks. Throughout January, February and into March, the government maintained the risk the virus posed to Canada was “Low,” even as evidence of human-to-human spread became increasingly evident around the world. Canada didn’t elevate its risk rating to “High” until March 16, nearly seven weeks after the WHO declared the global risk was high and urged countries to start preparing.

The Office of the Auditor-General has previously signalled that it would be taking a critical look at the federal government’s response to COVID-19, but the probe of GPHIN is now among its top priorities, according to sources familiar with the matter. The sources were not authorized to speak publicly and the Auditor-General, as a matter of course, does not comment publicly on its investigations. The work is to be completed late this year or early next year.

“It’s still early in the process,” said Vincent Frigon, spokesman for the Office of the Auditor-General. “We don’t comment on ongoing audits, however when we do have a better idea of what’s the scope of the audit we should be able to release the information. … We should have a more specific timeline later this year.”

A PHAC spokesman said the agency would assist in the audit. “The Auditor-General plays an important role in Canada’s democracy as a key Officer of Parliament,” PHAC said in an e-mailed statement. “The Public Health Agency of Canada is fully prepared to assist the Office of the Auditor-General as they work on their audit of the Government’s pandemic preparedness and response.”

Few outside GPHIN knew the operation had curtailed its outbreak surveillance work to the extent it had. When a senior public health official addressed the WHO in November, the government described the system as still active. In a 2018 assessment of Canada’s pandemic preparedness capabilities, the WHO referred to GPHIN as the “cornerstone” of Canada’s pandemic response capability, and “the foundation” of global early warning, where signals are “rapidly acted upon” and “trigger a cascade of actions” by governments.

The unit, which involves roughly a dozen highly trained epidemiologists and doctors fluent in multiple languages, began as an experiment in the 1990s during the advent of the internet, but was elevated after the 2003 SARS crisis, when Canada realized it needed to be better prepared for serious outbreaks.

When fully operational, it was a combination of machine learning and human analysis, with GPHIN’s algorithms sifting through more than 7,000 data points from around the world each day, from local news reports and online discussions to arcane medical data, searching for unusual patterns. Those were then narrowed down for closer analysis by medical experts.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/investigations/article-auditor-general-to-probe-oversight-of-countrys-pandemic-warning/

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Ontario government spending $1.6M to fight racism, supporting community-based anti-hate initiatives

2020/07/31 Leave a comment

Small change, more symbolic than substantive:

Ontario is investing $1.6 million over two years to fight racism and hate in the province.

The money will support community-based anti-racism and anti-hate initiatives, focusing on anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia.

“Racism and hate will not be tolerated and our government is doing everything it can to protect people from being victimized because of their race or religious beliefs,” Solicitor General Sylvia Jones said in a statement.

“This new grant program will be developed collaboratively with community partners across Ontario to ensure it leads to the most effective solutions in the fight against racism and hate in our province. These much-needed solutions cannot come from government alone.”

Evan Balgord, the executive director at the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said in an interview that allocating the funds from the new Anti-Racism and Anti-Hate Grant has to be meaningful.

“We see grants disproportionately go towards research projects or small-scale education programs or art programs,” said Balgord.

“We’re just not at the point anymore where we need a whole bunch more research on it. We need tangible action, and governments should be prioritizing grants that promise to take tangible, measurable actions against hate speech, hate crimes, and groups that promote organized hate in Canada.”

A press release said beginning in fall 2020, Ontario’s Anti-Racism Directorate (ARD) will collaborate with community groups to learn about individual experiences and local needs to form the grant. The ARD was established in 2016. It works to eliminate systemic racism in government policies, decisions, and programs and advance racial equity for Black, Indigenous, and racialized people.

The grant will focus on increasing public awareness of the impact of systemic racism and hate. It supports Ontario’s Anti-Racism Strategy to fight and mitigate systemic racism in government decision making, programs, and services.

Balgord said people should be concerned about racism and hatred in Canada.

“People feel very emboldened to be racist and spread death threats,” he said. “That’s something we need to bring social accountability back to.”

Source: Ontario government spending $1.6M to fight racism, supporting community-based anti-hate initiatives

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

WE’s history with Beijing, from endorsements in People’s Daily to appearances at Chinese embassy

2020/07/31 Leave a comment

Yet another aspect of WE and how its business interests made it blind to Chinese government interests:

Amid the impressive array of endorsements, honorary degrees, actual degrees and accomplishments on Craig Kielburger’s LinkedIn page , one bit of acclaim particularly stands out.

His 2008 book Me to We: Finding meaning in a material world , was not just a New York Times bestseller, the profile says. It was also named “one of the best books for Chinese young people in People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the government of China, along with CCTV, China’s government broadcaster.”

Citing testimonials from an authoritarian regime’s chief print and television organs, though, is only one way the co-founder of the WE movement has forged ties with China.

WE Charity and its for-profit partner, Me to We, have had a significant presence there for years, performing development work in poor rural villages, holding at least two “mini” versions of their inspirational WE Day events and selling trips to Chinese youth that combined tourism and volunteer work.

Marc Kielburger, Craig’s brother and WE co-founder, was hosted by the Chinese ambassador to Canada at the Ottawa embassy in 2015, and Me to We was declared part of China’s celebrations of the 45 th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic ties between Canada and Beijing.

The organization’s embrace of China mirrors in a sense the actions of myriad Canadian companies, post-secondary institutions and school boards eager to tap into the world’s second-biggest economy.

It also parallels the Liberal government’s policy until recently to broadly engage China.

But the response from Beijing seems part of an attempt by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), through its United Front Work Department (UFW), to co-opt such Western NGOs and burnish its own international image, says one critic of the regime.

“WE’s relationship with PRC has the classic signature of UFW at work,” said Ivy Li, spokeswoman for the group Canadian Friends of Hong Kong. “At the minimum, it tells us that UFW considers Kielburger and his book useful propaganda tools…. The CCP was essentially announcing to the Chinese people (and the world) that this Western guy is a ‘friend of China.’”

Despite continued reference online to its China connections, however, WE appears to have pulled back somewhat from the country.

It has not held a WE Day there in almost five years, no longer does “youth cultural trips” and its charity work is focused on supporting “past development projects,” said an unnamed WE spokesperson in response to questions.

It flatly denies having become cozy with Beijing authorities, or that China’s abysmal human-rights record calls into question its involvement in the country.

“WE Charity does not have a relationship with the Chinese government,” said the spokesperson via email. “WE Charity strives to ensure that all children, regardless of the political persuasion of their government, have access to healthcare, food security, and the fulfillment of their basic needs.”

The Kielburgers’ WE movement has attracted unprecedented scrutiny lately because of the untendered contract the federal government awarded it to run a student work program, despite close ties with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Some of that attention has focused on its unorthodox corporate structure, involving WE Charity and Me To We, a “social enterprise” that says it funnels most of its profits into the charity.

Both have been active in China.

WE Charity – formerly called Free the Children—- says it has built 250 school rooms , including multi-storey school buildings in rural China, spurred to action by reports in 2002 of child labourers being killed in a fireworks factory.

Meanwhile, Me To We has operated in China as a joint Sino-foreign venture since 2012, according to its Chinese website , catering to much more affluent schoolchildren. It says it engaged in quality international education, student exchanges between Canada and China and partnerships with official state bodies like the Beijing Dongcheng District Education Commission.

The trips for Chinese students included one to Fujian province. That involved studying the local culture, taking part in volunteer work and learning about the belt and road initiative, the infrastructure project that is a centrepiece of Beijing’s foreign policy, according to the company website .

And the group held “mini” versions of the flashy WE Day events that pack thousands of youth into arenas in North America and the United Kingdom.

At one in Beijing in 2015, former NBA star Yao Ming was among the presenters, according to a local news site, while a famous TV host appeared at a ME Day in Shanghai.

When Marc Kielburger and Victor Li, ME’s China-raised CFO, visited the embassy in Ottawa, then ambassador Luo Zhaohui praised ME for “promoting social welfare and charity programs, improving youth social responsibility consciousness and teamwork skills.“

Guy Saint-Jacques said the WE organization never popped onto his radar when he was Canada’s ambassador to China from 2012 to 2016, but said the official praise for Kielburger’s book might have been a response to incidents there in which bystanders callously ignored accident victims.

“It fits with the ideology of the CCP, ie., to be selfless and help others, etc.,” he said. “This happened at a time when the leadership was concerned that people were acting in very selfish ways, not providing assistance to someone injured.”

Li says she believes Beijing worked with WE for other purposes.

Those include helping to “build a gentle and benign facade for CCP, to provide evidence that CCP is working on human rights in China, CCP is trying hard to be ‘progressive left’, and to gain trust not just from WE, but from other similar NGOs and the international progressive left camp.”

Source: WE’s history with Beijing, from endorsements in People’s Daily to appearances at Chinese embassy

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Canada’s troubles with China are only temporary, says former ambassador: ‘Chinese people and Canadian people are good friends’

2020/07/31 Leave a comment

How unseemly and unethical, cashing in on his brief time as immigration minister and as Canadian Ambassador. And revealing his conversations with the current Minister (or presenting them as such) is equally shameful:

Canada’s troubles with China are temporary and relations with the rising superpower will return to sunnier times, including borders once again open to immigration and investment, John McCallum, the former ambassador fired from his position last year, has told clients of a major Chinese immigration company.

Mr. McCallum served in the federal cabinet, including as immigration minister, before he was named Canada’s ambassador to China in 2017. He was fired in 2019 after repeatedly speaking in support of the release of Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei executive accused of fraud in the U.S. and arrested in Canada, where she is in the midst of extradition proceedings.

But his experience and connections have made him a coveted speaker for Wailian Group, a Shanghai-based company with a 20-year history of smoothing the path for people to immigrate to Canada. Last fall, Wailian paid to have Mr. McCallum speak to clients in five Chinese cities, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the person because they are not authorized to speak publicly.

On Saturday, Mr. McCallum delivered remarks to another event organized by Wailian, this one online, in which he pitched Canada as a worthwhile destination for people from China, and cited his friends in the current cabinet to offer reassurances.

“Basically, I think China-Canada relations will be good going forward,” Mr. McCallum said.

Canada’s economy needs Chinese students, tourists and investors, he said, and the Liberal government is eager to reopen Canada’s borders to large numbers of new arrivals. He based his comments in part on a recent conversation with Marco Mendicino, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, who “plans to admit large numbers of immigrants to Canada in 2021,” Mr. McCallum said.

The government has not publicly disclosed how the pandemic will affect plans to admit 341,000 new permanent residents this year, and 351,000 next year. The global spread of COVID-19 has dramatically slowed the pace of immigration, with many visa and biometrics collections offices closed around the world. At a parliamentary hearing in June, Mr. Mendicino would only promise a “comprehensive update in the fall” on anticipated immigration levels.

Information about the government’s plans, however, is of keen interest to those seeking to immigrate, and to companies such as Wailian, whose business is built around ushering clients through the complexities of the application process.

Mr. McCallum offered reassurances that COVID-19 will create only a temporary pause in Canadian acceptance of new residents. “The Canadian government remains extremely positive about continuing high levels of immigration,” he said, citing his conversation with Mr. Mendicino.

He was equally optimistic about the prospects for Ottawa and Beijing to resolve the “substantial problems” that have arisen following the arrest of Ms. Meng, and China’s subsequent seizure of two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said is an “obvious” effort to put pressure on the Canadian government

The current frictions “are less long-term in nature than the U.S. challenges with China,” Mr. McCallum said. While the U.S. and China wrestle for what he called “top dog” status, “Chinese people and Canadian people are good friends,” he said. He pointed to a history that goes back to Norman Bethune, the ideologically communist Canadian doctor who came to China to treat Communist forces and who was famously eulogized by Mao Zedong. Canada also sold wheat to China in the early 1960s, in defiance of the U.S.

Today again, “economic interests will drive Canada and China to continue to work together,” Mr. McCallum said. For example, Chinese students “cover a lot of the costs” for Canadian postsecondary institutions, so “the last thing in the world Canadian universities would want to do would be to lose their 140,000 Chinese students.”

Similarly, Chinese tourists “spend a lot of money, create a lot of jobs. And they are most welcome in this country,” Mr. McCallum said. On investment, too, he said. “I think Canada will be open for Chinese investment in all but the most sensitive sectors.”

Mr. McCallum made no mention of the broader reassessment of China that has prompted a series of liberal democracies – from Australia to Europe and the U.S. – to erect new barriers to Chinese investment and apply new scrutiny to the motives of Chinese students and researchers with ties to their home country’s military institutions.

Less than six months after he was fired as ambassador last year, Mr. McCallum became a senior strategic adviser for McMillan LLP, the law firm.

He first made a public appearances for Wailian last October and November, when he came to China to deliver remarks and pose for photographs. Over two weeks, he appeared at Wailian events in Qingdao, Beijing, Suzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen. In each city, he spoke to a room with dozens – in some cases more than 100 – prospective clients for Wailian. The company paid for his attendance through an agreement with McMillan, according to the person familiar with the events.

Wailian promotional materials identify Mr. McCallum only as former ambassador and immigration minister, with no reference to McMillan.

Mr. McCallum in turn has called on his federal government connections.

Mr. Mendicino spoke with Mr. McCallum in mid-June, Kevin Lemkay, the minister’s spokesman, said in a statement. He “reached out to Mr. McCallum as a former colleague to discuss immigration and refugee issues,” Mr. Lemkay said, adding: “At no time did Mr. McCallum ever mention this company [Wailian] to the minister.”

Under Canadian law, Mr. McCallum is barred from lobbying the federal government for five years after leaving office. He said his conversation with the minister did not constitute lobbying. Mr. Mendicino “approaches me from time to time for general discussion as a friend and former minister,” Mr. McCallum said in response to questions from The Globe and Mail.

Still, the former ambassador’s comments risk giving a wrong impression, said David Mulroney, who previously served as Canada’s top diplomat to China.

“I would find any public reference in China by Mr. McCallum to a conversation with a current Immigration Minister very troubling,” said Mr. Mulroney. Such a reference could be seen in China as an indication of “continuing guanxi or connectedness, the idea that the former office holder retains a continuing degree of influence. Canadians in that position, like Mr. McCallum, should be very careful about business relationships in China for this very reason.”

Wailian describes itself as a major immigration company, with some 500 employees across 12 Chinese cities. Reached by telephone, a representative for the company described Mr. McCallum as a special guest.

Critics equate past friendly policies toward China to “appeasement” and say it is time for reconsideration of how Western countries interact with the rising superpower.

“It has become impossible to remain ambivalent on China,” said Guy Saint-Jacques, who was Canada’s ambassador to China before Mr. McCallum’s appointment.

Mr. Saint-Jacques pointed to China’s management of the early outbreak of the pandemic, its treatment of the largely Muslim Uyghur population, its imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong and “the way they have treated Canadians and Canada. To turn around and say, ‘Well, this is just a bump in the road and things will get back to normal’ – I don’t understand how someone can say this.”

In his comments to the Saturday event, however, Mr. McCallum called on long-standing arguments for why people from China might choose Canada as an immigrant destination, citing its quality of life, its beauty and its open attitude toward people arriving from other countries.

He was careful to point to its appeal to the well-heeled who might consider Canada a destination for profit as well as immigration. Canadian free-trade agreements make the country a favourable place to relocate to, he said, while “with the United States becoming less friendly to China, I think that increases the attraction of Chinese companies to invest in Canada.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-canadas-troubles-with-china-a-bump-in-the-road-will-soon-smooth/

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US Census Bureau Head: No Advance Warning Over Citizenship Count

2020/07/31 Leave a comment

Incompetence or deliberate disfunction:

The U.S. Census Bureau director testified Wednesday that he was not given advance notification about an order by the Trump administration that called for undocumented immigrants to be excluded from the national census.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier this month in which he argued that having people who are in the country illegally affect representation in Congress “would be a perversion of our democratic principles.”

Steven Dillingham was called before the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee to discuss the order affecting the 2020 census, the once-a-decade count of every person living in the United States and its five territories.

The census has vast implications for the country. The results are used to decide how many congressional seats each state gets, as well as the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending.

Dillingham told lawmakers that he did not know if any Census Bureau staff were involved in drafting the order, which has been called unconstitutional by civil rights groups.

The Democrats who chair the House Oversight Committee said Trump’s order went against prior assurances from administration officials who pledged at earlier hearings to conduct a complete count that includes everyone residing in the United States.

But Republicans said the order was constitutional, saying the president’s order applied only to redrawing the congressional districts, not the count or how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed.

The Census Bureau was forced to suspend field operations in March and April because of the coronavirus pandemic. The deadline for finishing the count was pushed from July 31 to October 31.

Dillingham also offered in his testimony that despite the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 census self-response has been a “tremendous success.”

“We are now at almost 63 percent, with more than 92 million households counted. About 80 percent have chosen to respond using the internet. Our response system has not had a single minute of downtime since we first invited people to respond online, beginning in March,” he said.

Source: US Census Bureau Head: No Advance Warning Over Citizenship Count

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China’s Muslim Uighurs Are Stuck in U.S. Immigration Limbo

2020/07/30 Leave a comment

Yet another consequence of Trump administration immigration policies and practices:

Kalbinur Awut came to the U.S. in 2015 from China’s far west for graduate study. Soon after arriving at the University of Rhode Island, she applied for political asylum. A member of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority, she had been harassed in China for wearing headscarves and was briefly detained after she applied to study overseas.

When she signed into a website run by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services this month to check her status, the same old message greeted her, with her wait time the only update: “Your case has been pending with USCIS for 1,796 days, not including delays,” it said.

China’s treatment of Uighurs exploded into the American consciousness around two years ago with reports that China was rounding up around a million Uighurs in what appeared to be concentration camps in the western region of Xinjiang.

Roughly around the same time, changes in U.S. asylum policies slowed the process for many of those claiming risk in their home countries. As a result, while the Trump administration is targeting China with various Xinjiang-related sanctions, hundreds of Uighurs like Ms. Awut are in U.S. immigration limbo with asylum bids hung up for years.

Applicants say that they are grateful the U.S. lets them work while awaiting a decision, but that their options are limited as prospective employers or landlords can be wary about their legal status. Lawyer charges and fees to renew work permits and temporary legal documents like driver’s licenses are a constant worry. Their quasi-legal status also leaves them at risk of deportation.

USCIS said its backlog for those seeking asylum, which provides a path to permanent residence and citizenship, was about 340,000 as of last September, the latest figures available, which equates to several years worth of cases. A few hundred Uighurs are in that queue, among Syrians fleeing civil war, Rohingya forced out of Myanmar and Hondurans fearing gang violence, according to lawyers.

Lawyers say the holdup is most acute in USCIS’s center in Arlington, Va., near where the majority of Uighurs in the U.S. have settled. Rights groups put the number of Uighurs in the country at less than 8,000.

Many Uighurs whose applications have been held up came to the U.S. to study or for work or holiday, then filed for asylum as Chinese authorities tightened control in Xinjiang and it became clear that having international ties was cause enough to get locked up.

Among those in limbo is Tahir Hamut, a poet and filmmaker who applied in late 2017 and has spoken to The Wall Street Journal about the detention camps and his family’s harrowing escape from China. Shortly after one article was published, Mr. Hamut said, his younger brother disappeared in Xinjiang and two female relatives got called in for police interrogation.

“Since the situation in our homeland is so hard right now, the Uighur people in the United States are facing a huge psychological stress,” he said by telephone from Fairfax, Va., as his 18-year-old daughter Asena translated. Mr. Hamut said he used an appearance two years ago at a religious-freedom event chaired by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to request faster application processing, but hasn’t seen results.

His daughter said the family’s uncertain legal status makes her ineligible to join the U.S. Air Force, despite spending two years in a high-school Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. She is giving up hopes of affording her dream schools, George Mason University or Virginia Tech.

“I’m thinking of changing my plans, going to a community college,” she said.

President Trump last month signed a law aiming to punish top Chinese policy makers and companies associated with repression of Islamic minority groups, including Uighurs. The State Department has targeted Chinese officials, including Chen Quanguo, China’s top appointee to Xinjiang and a member of the Communisty Party’s 25-member Politburo.

The U.S. has also blocked certain imports from Xinjiang and placed goods on watch that might be produced with forced labor.

Uighurs overseas applaud such actions as long overdue. But unprecedented political recognition has done little to get asylum applicants out of their immigration logjam.

The Trump administration has rarely made exceptions for applicants from any particular country, including Cubans or Venezuelans, whose governments are the target of tough U.S. policies. U.S. congressional efforts to welcome some Hong Kong residents after China enacted a national-security law in the territory would run on a separate track from the asylum process.

Beijing has defended stepped-up policing and what it calls vocational training centers in Xinjiang as necessary to combat extremism. It denounces sanctions by the U.S. as interference in China’s domestic affairs.

Lawyers say Uighurs have traditionally had very little problem winning asylum in the U.S. “Uighur cases have an astonishingly high approval rate,” said Rockville, Md., lawyer Brian Mezger. Nearly 100% of the Uighurs he has represented over more than two decades have obtained asylum.

In a pivotal change to the asylum system, U.S. immigration authorities in early 2018 adopted a type of last-in, first-out system to prioritize interviews with the newest applicants. The idea was to weed out those the administration said had in past years mainly sought ways to work legally in the U.S. and didn’t have a clear claim to asylum.

The effect was to push existing applicants to the back of the line. A 32-year-old Uighur woman in Boston said she and her husband have been waiting for an interview since 2014—and have had a son in the meantime—while an application by her younger sister after the policy changed in 2018 was approved in three months.

USCIS said that its broader efforts to control frivolous and fraudulent asylum claims are paying dividends and that the most recent numbers show its backlog is growing less quickly.

Like other Uighurs interviewed, the woman in Boston said she and her sister didn’t come to the U.S. intending to stay but both grew anxious as friends and family members back in China were increasingly harassed and sometimes detained, making their own returns to China all but impossible. “We do not have a country, and our life is jeopardized if we go back,” she said, fearing problems for her parents in Xinjiang if she speaks out.

Ms. Awut, who lost teaching jobs during the pandemic, is for now living with her son at the home of a friend near San Francisco. She said Chinese police sometimes attempt to question her via the social-messaging platform WeChat but that she has been unable to connect with her mother, brother or sister since 2016.

“I don’t know if they are alive,” she said.

Source: China’s Muslim Uighurs Are Stuck in U.S. Immigration Limbo

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Chinese diplomat accuses critics of sowing division among Chinese Canadian community

2020/07/30 Leave a comment

As if Chinese diplomats are not themselves sowing divisions:

A Chinese diplomat is accusing Canadians who criticize Beijing’s new Hong Kong security law of trying to sow discord among people of Chinese origin in Canada.

Tong Xiaoling, China’s consul-general in Vancouver, told a Chinese-language radio program in Vancouver this week that pro-democracy activists in Canada who criticize the new security law enacted in Hong Kong are trying to foist their views on people who support Beijing’s move. Her interview was broadcast over Monday and Tuesday.

She said a “very few people, in both Hong Kong and local [Canada], have been maliciously denigrating and sabotaging Hong Kong’s national security legislation,” and she accused them of colluding with “anti-China forces” and trying to cause “trouble” overseas.

“Some people were trying to intimidate people who truly care about Hong Kong, stop them from voicing [their opinions] and launch personal attacks on them. [They] also try to create divisions in the ethnically Chinese community and sabotage China-Canada relations,” Ms. Tong said to Vancouver radio station 1320 AM, which bills itself as the “voice of Vancouver’s Chinese community.”

Ms. Tong proceeded to list various members of the Chinese community in Vancouver: those from Hong Kong, from Macau, from mainland China and the self-governing island of Taiwan.

Canadian activists for democracy in Hong Kong say that’s an unusual thing for a foreign government official to be concerned about. It’s not the Chinese government’s business to be actively concerned with the opinion of Canadians of Chinese origin, they say.

The Beijing-drafted national security law punishes what China broadly defines as subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison. Critics of the law fear it will crush the wide-ranging freedoms promised to the territory when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, including the right to protest and an independent legal system. Supporters of the law say it will bring stability after last year’s often-violent anti-government and anti-China unrest.

Vancouver has been home to a number of rallies against the new national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong, including demonstrations outside Oakridge Centre and the local Chinese consulate.

Cherie Wong, executive director for Alliance Canada Hong Kong, an umbrella group for Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates in this country, said the Chinese government acts as though it has a proprietary claim on people of Chinese origin in Canada.

“Why would a foreign diplomat care about what the Chinese Canadian community thinks? It’s because the Chinese Communist Party feels a level of ownership over ethnically Chinese individuals,” Ms. Wong said.

“The accusation that we are dividing Chinese people is in fact reinforcing the idea that we are a monolith, which is very much incorrect. It’s part of the same propaganda, erasing the differences in political opinions.”

Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, said that in his opinion the Chinese government devotes a lot of resources to try to shape the opinions of ethnically Chinese communities in foreign countries in the hope of influencing public policy. “The message is repeated all the time: Don’t forget the Motherland.”

He said Ms. Tong’s comments reflect a more assertive brand of Chinese foreign policy. “She should be reminded that Canadians are Canadians: We don’t make a distinction between Canadians of Chinese origin and Canadians of British origin.”

Members of the House of Common’s special Canada-China committee, meanwhile, are meeting this week to consider holding hearings on the new Hong Kong security law.

“Conservatives proposed months ago for the Canada-China Committee to reconvene for intensive study of the horrific and deteriorating situation in Hong Kong. A lot of time has been lost in the interim, and it is all the more urgent now for us to hold intensive hearings on the situation in Hong Kong,” Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, a member of the committee, said.

Ms. Tong told 1320 AM that the national security bill was designed to bring calm to Hong Kong. Mass protests began in mid-2019 over proposed legislative changes that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. This civil disobedience later evolved into demands for greater democracy and autonomy.

She blamed foreign governments and even the self-ruled island of Taiwan for encouraging this disobedience.

She also said she understands some overseas Chinese people have expressed concerns over the new law, worrying that it will violate Hong Kong people’s rights and freedoms, but blamed biased media reports and foreign politicians for their concerns.

She said the law will target only a tiny minority of people who sabotage Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability and the national security.

“If you do not break such law, and aren’t involved in these activities, why do you need to worry about your safety?”

Source: Chinese diplomat accuses critics of sowing division among Chinese Canadian community

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