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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Parliament should label Uyghur persecution as genocide to foster global support against China’s human rights abuses, says former Liberal justice minister

2020/07/30 Leave a comment

Needed debate and action:

Parliamentarians heard from activists during hours-long committee meetings last week who were calling for the Chinese government’s oppression of Uyghur Muslims to be acknowledged as genocide, and a former justice minister says Parliament is uniquely positioned to have a “distinguishable role” in condemning Beijing’s alleged behaviour to build an international partnership to counter China’s bullying.

The House Subcommittee on International Human Rights heard from more than 20 witnesses over 14 hours on July 20 and July 21 about the persecution of the Uyghurs. Many said the mistreatment and abuse of Uyghurs was tantamount to genocide and called for Canada to take a stand.

“Genocide obliges us all—internationally, domestically, governments, Parliaments, civil societies—and here the Canadian Parliament has a distinguishable role to call out genocide,” said Irwin Cotler, a former Liberal justice minister and now founding chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He told The Hill Times that Parliament has set a precedent of playing a leading role in calling out human rights abuses and acts of genocide.

“I think it’s very important that governments act in concert, that Parliaments act in concert, as well as civil society acting in concert in calling out China,” said Mr. Cotler, who was a Liberal MP from 1999 to 2015. “If we want to protect the rules-based international order—and justice for the victims in China and accountability for the violators—we’re going to have to do so in concert governmentally and in Parliament.”

“Canada can play a leading role in this,” he said, citing the work that Parliamentarians have previously done raising the issue of genocide prevention, and raising awareness of the Rohingya genocide, among other targeted mass killings.

“China has been assaulting the rules-based international order and committing these international crimes with impunity thus far,” Mr. Cotler said. “They’ve been able to do so with impunity because they have been leveraging their economic and political power, and targeting countries one by one if those countries dare stand up to them.”

“What is needed now is an inter-governmental alliance, an alliance of democracies, so China doesn’t leverage its power and bully countries one by one.”

Some witnesses told the subcommittee that it is necessary for Canada to place sanctions on top Chinese Communist Party officials in Xinjiang where there are reports of mass detentions and forced sterilization of the Uyghur population.

The Associated Press reported on a systematic program to reduce the Muslim population in China, with the government enacting population control measures, which included IUDs and sterilization.

Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, told the subcommittee that in 2018, 80 per cent of new IUDs in China were placed in Xinjiang, which only makes up 1.8 per cent of China’s population.

The Chinese government has long held that human rights abuses aren’t taking place in Xinjiang and have called the alleged detention facilities “vocational education and training centres” that are being used to combat terrorism.

University of Ottawa international law professor Errol Mendes, who appeared virtually before the subcommittee, said Canada should apply Magnitsky sanctions on the “chief planners of the detention.” He said that should be Xinjiang regional government chairman Shohrat Zakir and Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, a member of the politburo.

Prof. Mendes told The Hill Times that imposing sanctions would prove that Canada is not staying silent and is upholding its commitment as a party to the United Nations Genocide Convention.

He added that the sanctions will “probably not” have tangible results in the short run. In spite of that, Prof. Mendes said when countries have “sufficient proof” that a genocide is taking place, “they must act.”

Magnitsky sanctions have already been applied on Chinese Communist Party officials in Xinjiang by the U.S., including on Mr. Chen.

Prof. Mendes said other levers can also be used, such as stopping companies from purchasing products in their supply lines from Xinjiang, which have reportedly been through forced labour.

He said that a motion of Parliament labelling the actions of the Chinese government as acts of genocide might not have impact for Beijing.

“Sending a direct signal to one of the main politburo members sends a message to President Xi [Jinping],” Prof. Mendes said.

Mr. Cotler said a parliamentary condemnation of the Chinese government’s mistreatment should include sanctions as well.

“Under the Genocide Convention, there is an obligation to act pursuant to that determination and an obligation to hold a country—that is engaged in acts that constitute genocide—accountable,” he said.

It is the responsibility of Canada and the international community to bring justice to the victims and hold criminals accountable, Mr. Cotler said.

University of Ottawa professor John Packer, director of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre, said that it is clear that China has been committing genocide based on the Genocide Convention.

According to the convention, an act of genocide is taking place if any of the five conditions are met: killing members of a group; causing “serious bodily harm or mental harm” to member of a group; intentionally “inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”; “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”; and “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Prof. Packer said it looks “quite clear” that there have been breaches of the convention, adding that “it is very difficult not to draw the negative inference that this is purposeful state policy.”

“That would mean that it is genocide,” he said. “This is not by accident.”

“If China really believes this is all mistaken, they should be entirely open to exposing to international scrutiny what is going on,” he said, adding that if there is a dispute, the convention states it should be referred to the International Court of Justice.

Prof. Packer also noted a party to the Genocide Convention has a duty to prevent acts of genocide.

“If we see something happening and we are silent then there are fundamental issues about how seriously we consider this fundamental norm of international relations,” he said.

“Where such cases [of genocide] are quite clear in terms of international exposure, such as the Rohingya, such as the Uyghurs, it strikes me as extraordinary that we would demure—that we would shuffle our feet and look the other way,” Prof. Packer said.

He added that a motion of Parliament acknowledging a genocide is taking place would set a “very big international symbol.”

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan, Alta.), his party’s critic of Canada-China relations, said the subcommittee heard “clear-cut” evidence of genocide.

“We should recognize that the Chinese state is guilty of genocide in Xinjiang,” he said, adding that Canada should respond with Magnitsky sanctions and by addressing the possible complicity of investment in Chinese companies that are involved in the oppression in Xinjiang, as well as imported products that are produced through forced labour.

“All of that flows from recognition” that a genocide has taken place, Mr. Genuis said, adding that both the Canadian government and the House of Commons should make that acknowledgement.

Echoing Mr. Cotler, he said there is a need for principled multilateralism of likeminded countries that follow their own obligations in concert with each other.

“What we’ve seen from the government is occasional words but no actions,” Mr. Genuis said. “The government has acknowledged the issue of abuses of human rights involving Uyghurs. They have not used the word ‘genocide,’ they have not used the words ‘crimes against humanity.’ In other words, they haven’t used words that carry international legal significance.”

In a brief to the International Human Rights Subcommittee, Global Affairs noted that Canada is “deeply concerned” about human rights abuses against Uyghurs by Chinese officials.

Canada is urging that Beijing release “Uyghurs and other Muslims who have been detained arbitrarily—based on their ethnicity and religion.”

“Publicly and privately, in multilateral fora as well as in bilateral dialogues, Canada has consistently called the Chinese government to address repression in Xinjiang,” the brief notes.

Mr. Genuis said the government hasn’t addressed the issue in areas that have “legal weight.”

NDP MP Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, Alta.), her party’s representative on the International Human Rights Subcommittee, said the committee will release a statement on the meetings in early August.

“I think what we pretty universally agreed upon is that there needs to be more done,” she said. “We need to take a stronger stance to ensure that we are protecting human rights around the world. It doesn’t matter where it happens, the rule of law and the protection of human rights is vital.”

Ms. McPherson wouldn’t say whether the subcommittee meetings will lead to a recognition by Parliament that acts of genocide have taken place.

“I will say that the testimony that we heard—the very credible witnesses that we heard from, the survivors that we heard from—there’s pretty strong proof and testimony that there have been acts of genocide perpetrated against the Uyghur people,” she said.

She added that it is vital to figure out a strategy to re-engage on the world stage to jointly address China’s human rights record.

“We’re not ever going to want to do this alone. … We’re never going to want to take giant steps by ourselves. I think we want to work with our multilateral partners and we want to work with our likeminded allies and use those tools at our disposal to put some pressure on China to come back to the side of international law, to come back to the side of protection of human rights.”

Source: Parliament should label Uyghur persecution as genocide to foster global support against China’s human rights abuses, says former Liberal justice minister

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Drover: Parliament should invoke Notwithstanding Clause to reverse judicial overreach

2020/07/30 Leave a comment

To date, haven’t seen any commentary in the mainstream right of centre press (Postmedia). Further to the right, True North published this piece by Devin Drover, a member of NL Strong (affiliated with Ontario Proud) and former NL Conservative staffer, with minimal legal understanding and the realities of current US immigration and asylum policies under the Trump administration:

Judicial activism in Canada has continued to be on the rise in the last decade.

Our unelected judiciary appear to be favouring their own interpretations of the Canadian Constitution rather than a firm commitment to historical precedent and the text of the document itself.

The latest example of this comes from the Federal Court.

Last week, a federal court ruled that the law underpinning the Safe Third Country Act is a violation of our Charter-protected guarantee of life, liberty and security of the person. This interferes with Parliament to make their own foreign policy decisions.

The Safe Third Country Agreement, which took effect in 2004, is an agreement between the United States and Canada which recognizes that both countries are safe places for refugees to seek protection. The Agreement requires that Canada refuse the claim of an asylum claimant who arrives at the land ports of entry along the Canada-US border by requiring them to pursue their claim in the US instead – the country they first arrived in.

Through this decision, the Federal Court has attacked parliament’s ability to make decisions on Canada’s foreign affairs.  Appealing to what they deem the “spirit” of the legislation, they have ruled that the United States is a country which is now unsafe for refugees to return to – a dangerous precedent to set which can have negative consequences for our relations with our greatest foreign ally.

Trying to apply the Canadian Charter to asylum claimants upon return to another country – yet alone an allied country – is a massive overreach that goes far beyond the intention of who the Charter was intended to protect. It is not up to the courts to consider how non-citizens are to be treated in a different state – specifically a democratic one with their own firm commitment to the rule of law. It is certainly not the role of courts to determine they do not enjoy how the United States treats refugees upon return.

That is not to say one must endorse the United States treatment of refugees in opposing this decision. But we must endorse a commitment to an interpretation of the Charter which focuses more on protecting the ability for democratic lawmakers to exercise their rights, rather than judicial overreach and activism.

In the wake of this interference of Canadian foreign policy by the Federal Court, some legal commentators have gently shrugged and suggested Canadians should just wait for the Federal Court of Appeal to weigh in – if they choose to at all.

Nonsense.

The Charter does not exist to allow the courts to slide into areas of governance where they do not belong.

Parliament should assert itself as the guardian of separation of powers by invoking section 33 of the Charter – the aptly named Notwithstanding Clause – immediately to enable legislation to correct this judicial overreach.

In doing so, Parliament can tell the judiciary to stay in their lane, while ensuring that important lawmaking is done by those elected to do it.

Source: DROVER: Parliament should invoke Notwithstanding Clause to reverse judicial overreach

Filed under Immigration

#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 22 July Update

2020/07/30 Leave a comment

USA has moved ahead of France in terms of deaths per million. India has moved ahead of Pakistan. No major change in order of Canadian provinces.

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Terry Glavin: Will Canada stand with Uyghurs—and against ‘modern slavery?’

2020/07/29 Leave a comment

Valid questions:

While the Trudeau government is coming under increasing pressure to extricate Canada from commercial supply chains compromised by slave labour in China, a frustrated senior Liberal MP says the Prime Minister’s Office appears to be ignoring mounting evidence that China’s persecuted Uyghur minority, after being rounded up into re-education camps in the northwestern province if Xinjiang, is now being corralled into industrial gulags to satisfy the needs of global corporations.

“We simply cannot be a nation that professes what we purport to profess and continue to turn a wilful or negligent blind eye to the evidence of what is clear is going on,” says John McKay, chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. “But sometimes, governments don’t see what’s blindingly obvious.”

For two years, McKay has been attempting to push Parliament to adopt a new law, the Modern Slavery Act, which would require corporations doing business in Canada to ensure their supply chains are uncontaminated by forced labour and child labour. The law would provide for fines of up to $250,000 for violators and amend the Customs Tariff to allow the Canadian Border Services Agency to ban slave-labour goods from entering Canada.

McKay first introduced a private members’ bill proposing the law in 2018. Last year, before Parliament was dissolved for the October election, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development proposed such a law, and Marie-Claude Bibeau, who was International Development minister at the time, agreed to stakeholder consultations. That effort has now been passed on to Anthony Housefather, parliamentary secretary to Labour Minister Filomena Tassi. In an effort to move things along, earlier this year, Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne introduced McKay’s bill in the Senate.

And there it sits.

“If I were looking at royal assent by this time next year, I’d be dancing in the streets, presuming the government survives,” McKay told me. “It’s tough.”

The absence of an effective anti-slavery law in Canada was brought into dramatic relief last week when Bill Matthews, the deputy minister of public works, told the Commons government operations committee that Ottawa has no way of knowingwhether suppliers relying on Uyghur slave labour are benefitting from the $2 billion in new spending on personal protective equipment required to cope with the COVID-19 crisis. Most of new money is being spent in China. Liberal and Conservative MPs said they were shocked to learn that Ottawa expects Chinese suppliers to “self-certify” that no forced labour is involved in PPE production.

“It is distressing that the Government of Canada can’t assure a committee that there’s no element of slavery in the products that it purchases from its various suppliers,” McKay told me. “That, it seems to me, is something the Government of Canada should lead in, rather than relying on the blandishments of Chinese suppliers.”

But the slavery issue doesn’t arise only in government purchases of PPEs, McKay said. It arises across the board in trade with China. “We are in effect cutting our own throats,” McKay said. “There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that we can manufacture products at a price point that is competitive with the price point that China has to offer. We’re actually working against our own economy. It is ultimately not in Canada’s best interests, our moral best interests, or our interests writ large, or from a national security standpoint, an economic standpoint, or from a health standpoint, or an overall societal standpoint.”

Last week, nearly 200 human rights and labour organizations from 36 countries launched a campaign to secure formal commitments from the world’s major clothing brands to sever contracts with suppliers implicated in Uyghur slave labour. Beijing’s archipelago of “labour transfer” operations arise from the detention centres and re-education camps where the Chinese Communist Party has interned more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in their homelands in Xinjiang, purportedly to suppress religious and separatist militancy.

Campaigners estimate that 90 per cent of China’s cotton comes from Xinjiang, and one fifth of all cotton garments sold worldwide contain cotton or yarn from Xinjiang. But the corporations implicated in Uyghur forced labour are not just major garment brands and retailers like Adidas, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. Earlier this year, in a major investigative report titled “Uyghurs for Sale,” the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) found that at least 80,000 Uyghurs have been forced from Xinjiang and conscripted into factories across China where they are made to work in production for 83 international corporations, including Samsung, Apple, BMW, Sony, and Volkswagen.

Mehmet Tohti, the Canadian representative for the World Uyghur Congress, said he appreciates McKay’s efforts to bring Canada in line with modern anti-slavery laws already in force in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Brazil. McKay is not like most Liberals, Tohti said: “Their response is standard. They all stick to talking points. They repeat like parrots whatever the government says. It’s really difficult to understand those people.”

Here’s where Tohti differs with McKay.

The Uyghur crisis has to be addressed specifically, and fast, Tohti said. The World Uyghur Congress is hoping Canada will replicate a bipartisan initiative in the U.S. Congress, the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act, spearheaded by Massachusetts Democrat James McGovern and the Republicans’ Marco Rubio. Their proposed law would declare all goods relying on materials originating in Xinjiang to be the product of slave labour unless otherwise proven, shifting the burden of proof in the existing rules under the 1930 Tariff Act.

“It is shocking that we have not seen any steps taken in Canada to ban products that have entered Canadian markets through supply chains that use Uyghur forced labour,” Tohti said. “Canadian consumers continue to buy these products, unknowingly.”

And here’s where McKay sides with Tohti.

“If COVID has exposed anything it has exposed our unhealthy dependency upon products made in China, and I think it’s exposed vulnerabilities not only in PPEs but in vaccines and various other health supply chains that leave us hugely vulnerable as a nation to the political whims of the Communist Party of China. And I just don’t think that’s a viable position for Canada to be in, and that’s aside from the slavery issue.”

Source: Will Canada stand with Uyghurs—and against ‘modern slavery?’

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Racist stereotyping of Asians as good at math masks inequities and harms students

2020/07/29 Leave a comment

Some good analysis of the diversity within and between different Asian groups, as is the case with all groups and the risks of all stereotypes, along with the importance of socio-economic status:

Some people stereotype Asian students as the “model minority” in math achievement: they generalize attributes of a so-called “minority” (racialized) community in a way that just perpetuates racism disguised as a compliment.

It is clear, however, that not all students identified as Asian are good at math. The word “Asian” is a category used to represent human beings who are, in fact, diverse and their differences are lost by their inclusion in the term. “Asian” includes 50 or so ethnic groups in a huge diversity of linguistic, socio-economic, political and cultural settings. Making judgments based on categories often leads to faulty or erroneous implications.

Both scholars and cultural commentators have highlighted the problem that the “model minority” label is sometimes used politically to divide those who are held up as so-called “model” groups and those who are not. Reporter Kat Chow notes that some white people have talked about Asians in North America in ways that positions Asians’ so-called “success” as a “racial wedge” that separates Asians from Black people or other racialized groups. Such framing distracts from necessary conversations about racism and structural inequalities.

We are involved in a study launched in 2018, “Behind the Model Minority Mask,” that seeks to understand divergent literacy and academic trajectories of Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking children in Canada. We wanted to explore how early factors such as home and classroom environments and larger cultural myths surrounding “Asian academic achievement” may be affecting children’s academic results.

Our research has found that holding up a “model minority” stereotype leads to destructive emotional stress for students. The “model minority” myth both encourages blaming students for failure, obscures the socio-economic factors that influence student academic achievement and also imposes significant psychosocial pressure on high-achieving students.

Breaking down the meaning of ‘ESL’

Our research into Asian students in Vancouver schools also revealed that there are also problems with the generalized use of terms such as “English as a Second Language” (ESL) learners and “English Language Learners” (ELL).

For example, we learned through a series of studies of about 25,000 immigrant students aged six to 19 who were categorized as “ESL” that a small number were in fact non-ESL. They were raised in families where they learned another language in addition to English from birth.

Of the students who did learn English after another language, there was a wide range of English-language skills, from those who spoke only a little bit of English to those who were fluently bilingual. The group included immigrants and refugees and those who were from low to high socio-economic backgrounds, and included speakers of 150 first languages and dialects.

The “ESL” or “ELL” labels, like the “Asian” label, however, are sometimes also used in ways that can misrepresent achievement, influence or realities of individuals. Some right-wing media commentators use the “ESL” label, for example, to argue that ESL students are responsible for a “strain on the system,” and “lowering” education.

Such reprehensible commentary is facilitated by studies or news reports that rely on generalized categories and pay insufficient attention to variables.

Roots of achievement patterns

In part of our study, Lee Gunderson recorded science, math, English and social studies academic achievement of 5,000 randomly selected students from grades 8 to 12 in 18 Vancouver secondary schools including Asian students. ESL students scored significantly higher than native English speakers in all academic areas except English and social studies in Grade 12. Mandarin speakers’ academic achievement was also significantly higher than that of Cantonese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese and other language groups.

While there were high achievers among this diverse group of Asians, many Asian students (even among the Chinese subgroups) also reported struggling academically and socio-emotionally in school.

Socio-economic status was also found to be an important variable: Mandarin-speaking immigrants were from more affluent families than the other ethno-linguistic groups. Mandarin-speaking families employed more tutors to bolster their children’s academic work than other groups. Indeed, among this group, some Mandarin-speaking university students worked as academic tutors.

The sample of native-English speaking students included a wide-range of families from a range of socio-economic backgrounds. By contrast, the Mandarin sample, as a result of immigration patterns, included more high economic status families than other groups.

When high economic status native English speakers were selected they scored significantly higher in all academic areas than Mandarin speakers at all grades. Socio-economic status is related to school success.

Early beginnings

With this same set of students, initial assessment results in the early grades revealed no significant differences in achievement between young Cantonese and Mandarin speakers. However, by Grade 12 there were differences with Mandarin speakers having significantly higher grades.

Mandarin-speaking girls were four times more like to be eligible for university than Cantonese-speaking boys. About two-thirds of the Cantonese boys did not have grades sufficient for admission to university. Cantonese boys were at-risk students. The other Asian groups scored lower than Mandarin speakers in all academic areas.

Understanding differences

The two largest groups of Asian immigrants, the Cantonese and Mandarin speakers, were from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. The language of instruction in their communities was not English, so we expected these children’s English skills would be nascent when they immigrated to Canada.

As researchers, we did not expect that these students’ achievement would differ at the end of their public school careers. We also didn’t expect to see gender differences in academic achievement when this difference wasn’t present when these children first entered Canada. Nor did we expect to see differences among the Cantonese and Mandarin speakers.

As our research continues, we predict the findings will provide critical knowledge that educators need to improve the learning of Cantonese-speaking boys or others who we find to be at risk academically or socio-emotionally in Canadian schools.

We also hope we will identify characteristics of supportive ESL environments and inform early intervention through effective ESL program design and teacher professional development. Our hope is to provide information that informs parents about how to effectively support their children in school and at home in their early years.

Source: Racist stereotyping of Asians as good at math masks inequities and harms students

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Canada provides exception for U.S. students planning to study north of border

2020/07/29 Leave a comment

That was fast (a few days after this article Canada’s travel rules unfair to first-year foreign students, U.S. parents say:

The federal government appears to have relaxed restrictions at the Canada-U.S. border that would have made it impossible for first-year university students from the United States to enter the country.

An update to the government’s guidance for international students, posted Friday, now says a student coming from the U.S. may no longer need a study permit that was issued on or before March 18, the day the border restrictions were first announced.

New York resident Anna Marti, whose daughter is planning to attend McGill University in Montreal this fall, said she was part of a “group effort” by parents across the U.S. who lobbied their senators, members of Congress and Richard Mills, the acting U.S. ambassador to Canada, to get the restrictions eased.

The rule would have made it all but impossible for U.S. freshmen to get into Canada, while other later-year students with pre-existing student permits could cross the border easily — even after having spent the summer south of the border, where the COVID-19 pandemic has been growing in severity for months.

Marti said she was told by Mills that the issue came up during ongoing discussions in Washington about the Canada-U.S. border restrictions — and that her entreaties, as well as media coverage of the plight of U.S. parents, “helped to put a ‘face’ to the issue.”

Citizenship, Refugees and Immigration Canada now says border officers will accept a “port of entry letter of introduction” that shows the student was approved for a study permit, in lieu of a permit approved before March 18. The exception, however, only applies to students from the United States.

“We celebrated, although we won’t fully celebrate until she is in Montreal,” Marti said, noting that the family — and many others — must now wait for those letters of introduction and study permits to come through.

She’s also well aware of the fact that students hoping to travel to Canada from countries outside the U.S. are still bound by the March 18 restriction.

“I just hope someone continues addressing the issue for all international freshmen,” she said. “International students who quarantine are not the real danger.”

Other parents in the U.S. remain wary of the border, since the rules require anyone seeking entry to Canada to be travelling for a “non-discretionary or non-optional purpose” — a description that could exclude students whose courses are being held entirely online.

The total number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., growing by tens of thousands of cases a day, reached the 4.4 million mark Monday, with more than 150,000 deaths to date. Premature reopenings, an uneven and cavalier approach to physical distancing in parts of the country and a partisan divide over mask requirements have helped to fuel a surge in cases.

Canada, by comparison, has reported 114,000 total cases and nearly 8,900 fatalities so far.

“There are no measures in place to provide for expedited processing of study permit applications,” Canada’s immigration department said in an update earlier this month.

“Foreign nationals who had a study permit application approved after March 18, 2020 … may not be exempt from the travel restrictions (and) they should not make any plans to travel to Canada until the travel restrictions are lifted, as they will not be allowed to travel to or enter Canada.”

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino announced last week the government would prioritize study permits for students who have submitted complete applications online. Students will also be able to apply time spent studying online toward their eligibility for work permits in Canada, provided at least 50 per cent of the program is completed in Canada.

Ottawa has also introduced a priority processing system and a two-stage process for students who are unable to obtain all the necessary documentation.

A spokesman for Mendicino did not respond to media inquiries Monday.

Source: Canada provides exception for U.S. students planning to study north of border

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Be in Canada, bring scissors; instructions for online citizenship ceremonies Canada is now holding citizenship ceremonies online, so some new guidelines have been put in place.

2020/07/29 Leave a comment

Further to my earlier post, contrasting Australia’s 60,000 to Canada’s 1,000 new citizens over the past 3 months or so, @canadavisa_com flagged the new guidelines for online ceremonies:

Canada is not letting the coronavirus pandemic rob immigrants of their special day, but since citizenship ceremonies now take place over Zoom, a few changes have been made.

Canadian citizenship ceremonies are meaningful, important events in people’s lives, so Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) created new instructions for soon-to-be citizens who are taking their oath online.

IRCC will provide all the details of the citizenship ceremony in an invitation letter. It will include the date, time, Zoom link and log-in instructions.

Even though everything is being done online, you have to be physically in Canada in order to take the Oath of Citizenship. IRCC will ask you to confirm your location before you can participate in the ceremony. If you are not physically in Canada, you may have to do the citizenship ceremony once you are back in the country.

Though there’s no strict dress code IRCC says to dress “respectfully.” Wearing religious or traditional clothing is acceptable, though face coverings may be requested to be removed temporarily for identification purposes. Casual hats are discouraged.

You can sit for the entirety of the ceremony, even when saying the oath, but IRCC asks to choose a quiet room for the Zoom call. They recommend a room free of noise and distractions, and to have a plain background.

Your head and shoulders should be visible, and your hand-held device should be stable.

You’ll need a number of documents such as your permanent residence card, whether it’s expired or not, or your Confirmation of Permanent Residence (COPR). You will also need two pieces of ID, unless you’re under the age 18. Some people will need their record of landing if they came to Canada before June 28, 2002. IRCC will also send you a form to sign after you have taken the oath.

And of course, you’ll need scissors to cut up your permanent residence card on-screen, since you won’t be needing it anymore.

You also have the option to bring a holy book if you want to use it to swear the Oath of Citizenship.

Canada postponed citizenship ceremonies scheduled for the last two weeks of March following coronavirus closures and switched to holding the events online by April. On Canada Day, July 1, IRCC reported over 1,000 citizenship ceremonies had taken place online since the start of the pandemic.

They even held their annual Canada Day citizenship ceremony online. For the first time ever, 19 participants took the oath at the same time from all over Canada.

Source: cicnews.com/2020/07/be-in-…

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Griffith: What individual Canadians and organizations should do about China

2020/07/29 Leave a comment

My latest:

How should Canadians react to Chinese government actions?

With justified criticism regarding Chinese government repression of its Uighur minority, imposition of the Hong Kong security law, the hostage-taking of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in retaliation for the U.S. extradition request regarding Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou and escalation with Taiwan and the Indian border dispute, the focus has understandably been on protesting these belligerent actions.

To provide pressure for change, consumers should ask whether there are viable non-Chinese substitutes available for the products they seek, and consider shifting their purchasing accordingly. Given the pervasiveness of Chinese-made goods, consumers should distinguish between those assembled in China and those branded as Chinese. For example, should consumers purchase Huawei devices given that the detention of the two Michaels is directly related to the detention of Meng Wanzhou?  Foodstuffs provide another opportunity to switch to non-Chinese suppliers, given Chinese government targeting of Canadian agriculture exports.

Users of Chinese social media sites such as WeChat, Weibo and TikTok, or sites with China-based servers, may also wish to reconsider their use.

Individuals need to reconsider attendance at events hosted by the Chinese Embassy and consulates, or where Chinese diplomats are key speakers without another speaker invited to counter their aggressive talking points. This applies also to elected officials, given the business-as-usual signals that their presence at such events sends. If attendance is required, any speaking notes should include Canadian concerns regarding Chinese government actions: bilateral (the two Michaels) and general (Hong Kong, Uighurs).

Alternately, individuals should consider showing visible signs of protest at such events, such as turning their backs, carrying protest signs, or asking pointed questions.

Similarly, should Canadian non-governmental organizations invite Chinese diplomats to speak at events, given the questionable value of hearing belligerent talking points and the unlikelihood of open and free dialogue? And if so, can organizations structure events that include critical voices regarding Chinese government actions as a requirement of participation?

Should Canadian media run Chinese diplomat opinion pieces without corresponding rebuttals or commentary?

Organizations — academic, think-tanks or business — need to ask themselves harder questions regarding the objectives of their collaboration, and the nature of the organization they are collaborating with. Is Chinese government funding involved, or gifts? Will collaboration be portrayed as endorsement, and will be an open exchange of perspectives? In particular, organizations should be cautious of collaboration with entities that are part of the United Front, the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign influence arm.

Educational institutions and academics that have agreements with Confucius Institutes or other Chinese government organizations have to ask whether these undermine the values of the educational institution. Institutions may need to review their conflict-of-interest codes regarding academics accepting Chinese government funding. All should recognize that gifts often play a political role and thus should be treated with caution.

And to reiterate, any such action needs to be carefully focused on the Chinese government, not Chinese-Canadians or Chinese people. Unfortunately, Chinese-Canadians have been subject to racist attacks during the pandemic; proposing the actions I suggest places the focus where it should be: on the actions of the Chinese regime.

At the same time, we also need to recognize that some Chinese-Canadians have attachment to the People’s Republic of China, related both to their home culture as well as pride in China’s increased importance. The former is not at issue, the latter, combined with the Chinese regime’s diaspora and geo-political strategies, is – and that makes targeted messaging even more important.

While many of these actions I propose may appear as “virtue signalling,” given the power imbalance between Canada and China, not acting would be a missed opportunity to send a message to Chinese government officials that their public diplomacy, as pointed out by Canadian Ambassador Dominic Barton, is counterproductive and not supported by most Canadians.

Source: https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/griffith-what-individual-canadians-and-organizations-should-do-about-china/wcm/828b05d2-dd81-461c-9590-66147a82ca19/

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