Legault promises to give asylum seekers working in CHSLDs a chance to apply as immigrants

2020/05/27 Leave a comment

Reality intrudes:

Quebec Premier François Legault says he will consider giving asylum seekers who work in long-term care homes a chance to stay in the province by applying as immigrants.

Legault opened Monday’s briefing by saying he has asked Immigration Minister Simon-Jolin Barrette to look at the situation, on a case-by-case basis, as a way of saying “thank you.”

The co​​​​mments represent a departure for Legault. The Coalition Avenir Québec premier has previously rejected the idea of giving any kind of preference for asylum seekers and others without status working in essential jobs during the pandemic.

But there have been growing calls for him to recognize their contribution.

On Saturday, supporters held a rally in Montreal and on Sunday, Fabrice Vil, a Montrealer of Haitian background, was critical of the premier on the popular French-language talk show Tout le monde en parle.

Legault, whose government has cut immigration levels, said Monday he would try to strike a balance between giving thanks to those working in the residences, known by their French initials CHSLDs, while at the same time not setting a precedent.

“We have to be careful. I don’t want to send the message that in the future we will accept everybody if they find a job in Quebec,” he said.

“But we also have another situation where it’s really critical to get more people working in our CHSLD. So those people, they are already working in CHSLDs. So how can we bring them via the normal immigration process? That’s what I’m looking at.”

Legault added his government would also have discussions with the federal government, which is responsible for refugee applications.

While the province says it has no record of the total number of asylum seekers doing work in CHSLDs, advocates say hundreds of people, many of them originally from Haiti, have been working as patient attendants.

Some have already had their refugee claim rejected, and may not be able to stay in Canada when deportations resume.

Protest at PM’s office

Protestors rallied outside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Montreal office on Saturday, demanding he do more for asylum seekers who have been risking their lives by working in long-term care homes with COVID-19 outbreaks.

Frantz André, a member of the Action Committee for People without Status in Montreal, the group behind the demonstration, said Legault should be taking a stronger stand on the issue.

While the federal government makes the final decision when it comes to the immigration status of asylum seekers, provincial leaders are able to influence those decisions, he said.

“I think all the parties, including the CAQ, should have said in one voice, ‘Mr. Trudeau, you need to make a decision,'” André told CBC News on Monday.

“We as Quebecers, we are willing to give people an opportunity to be accepted, to be equally Canadian as anybody else.”

Source: Legault promises to give asylum seekers working in CHSLDs a chance to apply as immigrants

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Fearfulness is linked to reduced interaction with novel cultures for both immigrants and non-immigrants

2020/05/27 Leave a comment

Interesting and relevant study:

People who believe there are more dangers lurking in the social world are less likely to engage with cultures other than their own, according to new research published in Evolutionary Psychological Science. The new study indicates that this is the case for both minority groups and majority ingroup members.

“There was some existing work suggesting that different forms of threat play a role in prejudices towards outgroups, but these studies had often only looked at mainstream populations and their attitudes to stigmatized minorities, and had generally focused on people’s feelings towards individuals,” explained study author Nicholas Kerry, a PhD student at Tulane University.

“We wanted to look at this in a broader way which focused on social interactions and cultural practices. In other words, we were interested in things like how much time people spent with people of other cultures, how likely they would be to date someone of that culture, and how much they reported interacting with cultural practices other than the ones they grew up with.”

“So, for example, how much people enjoy the TV, movies, and jokes of another culture, and how much they believe in its cultural values. We were also especially interested in testing this in an immigrant sample, as well as a mainstream one, to see whether threat-perception was also related to their acculturation, i.e. their interaction with the mainstream culture.”

In the study, 171 immigrant Americans completed a measure of acculturation, which assessed their preference for the culture of their heritage versus mainstream American culture. A separate sample of 964 naturally-born Americans completed a similar measure, which assessed their interest in foreign cultures versus mainstream American culture. Both samples then completed surveys regarding their belief in a dangerous world, perceived vulnerability to disease, and their romantic partners.

The researchers found that belief in a dangerous world was associated with cultural neophobia. In other words, participants who agreed with statements such as “There are many dangerous people in our society who will attack someone out of pure meanness” displayed a stronger preference for their own cultural practices, regardless of whether they were immigrants or not.

Belief in a dangerous world also predicted whether participants had romantic partners of the same ethnicity.

“The central finding of this study is that people who perceive themselves to be at greater risk of physical threats tend to be less likely to interact with other cultures. One possible implication would be that if people wish to encourage integration between cultures, a good starting point might be to ameliorate conditions which make people feel threatened,” Kerry told PsyPost.

Concerns about disease, however, were unrelated to cultural preferences. The finding is somewhat surprising, given that past research has found it is a predictor of xenophobic attitudes. But Kerry and his colleagues noted that the previous studies “examined attitudes towards individuals, not cultural practices.”

“It should be noted that this study is entirely correlational, which means that we do not have direct evidence of the direction of any causal relationship. So future work could address this by looking at changes in individuals across time, to see whether it really is the case that fearfulness leads to less interaction with novel cultures,” Kerry added.

“It could also be interesting for future research to examine whether environmental conditions that serve as cues of threat (such as actual violent crime, or how much it is reported in the media) can influence regional levels of acculturation.”

The study, “Cultures of Fear: Individual Differences in Perception of Physical (but Not Disease) Threats Predict Cultural Neophobia in both Immigrant and Mainstream Americans“, was authored by Nicholas Kerry, Zachary Airington, and Damian R. Murray.

Source: Fearfulness is linked to reduced interaction with novel cultures for both immigrants and non-immigrants

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How a haven for refugees became home to the worst COVID-19 outbreak in Toronto’s shelter system

2020/05/26 Leave a comment

Of note:

In March, staff at Willowdale Welcome Centre, which would become the site of the largest COVID-19 outbreak in the city’s shelter system, grew concerned about infection control at the facility.

The refugee centre had opened in the fall. It housed about 200 men and women on separate floors, many of them professionals from Uganda and Nigeria seeking a better life in Canada.

It was soon operating seamlessly and clients quickly found housing and jobs.

“Once the shelter had its roots in place, it was pretty well-run. I was impressed,” said an employee who is not being named because he is worried about his future employment.

As March progressed, concerns about COVID-19 transmission grew — concerns which the employee and others at Homes First Society, the registered charity that operates Willowdale, felt were not being heard by management.

This account is based on interviews with staff at Willowdale and other shelters at Homes First; on e-mails between employees and management and official complaints made to the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development.

Staff at the shelter were being told not to wear masks — not unusual in the early days of the pandemic, when the focus was on preserving supply for front-line workers and as research suggested masks provided limited defence against the virus outside of health-care settings.

Staff were told to focus on proper handwashing and increased cleaning with disinfectants. But Lysol wipes, used to clean tables in the cafeteria between services, quickly went missing and were not replaced.

Responding to questions from the Star, Patricia Mueller, Homes First’s chief executive officer, said the charity followed public health guidelines at all times when it came to infection control measures, including personal protective equipment for employees.

Meanwhile, the outbreak is now over at the shelter, Mueller said, as no active cases remain.

In the beginning, the Willowdale employee said, it was difficult to get the shelter’s clientele — most of them 40 or younger — to consistently abide by the rules of social distancing and to follow the detailed recommendations related to handwashing and other measures.

“Younger ones said, ‘I’m not going to die,’” said the employee.

Many clients were diligent. Others were not.

The employee had heard, for example, that even after the city banned gatherings of more than five people, some refugees at the centre continued to attend church services — meeting in private residences.

“We have a friend’s house that is running it,” one of them told the employee.

It was while he was watching a newscast from New York City, fast becoming an international hot spot for the virus, that the employee made his decision.

“It made me realize we were on the same trajectory and I didn’t want to be a part of it,” said the employee. He quit soon thereafter and hasn’t been back.

He remains healthy. Meanwhile, more than two dozen of his former co-workers and more than 180 clients at Willowdale have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

“I have really close friends who got it. My heart breaks for them,” he said.

The Willowdale outbreak highlights the challenges of fighting COVID-19 in a congregate setting — anywhere people are grouped together indoors — and how a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach can go awry.

The refugee centre became the location with the highest number of infections in the city’s shelter system, which includes 72 locations. As of Wednesday, 185 clients had tested positive for COVID-19, and more than a dozen staff. No one has died.

At one point, the large number of clients at Willowdale being moved into COVID-19 recovery sites set up by the city raised concerns that there would be no room for clients from other shelters at the recovery centres.

So Willowdale was itself turned into a recovery centre, and medical personnel were brought to the shelter to attend to clients there, Mueller said.

Four Homes First workers who were interviewed for this story, including two who worked at Willowdale, say things would not have gotten so bad if their early concerns had been addressed in a timely fashion.

They are not being identified because they are fearful of being fired or not being rehired.

“Homes First dropped the ball on guarding against the disease,” according to a statement from Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union representing workers there.

Homes First Society lists 18 properties on its website, offering shelter ranging from single rooms for single men to townhouses for families.

According to an email exchange provided to the Star, union representatives at Homes First shelters began discussing the need to talk to management about safer working conditions on March 15. They spoke to human resources on March 19 and Mueller on March 23.

Their fears proved prescient: After scanning the news and medical literature for what was going on in other parts of the world, they asked for measures that would soon come to be regarded as routine, including maintaining a two-metre distance in shelters, ending the practice of allowing staff to work at more than one location, and face masks.

They tried to escalate their concerns in some cases, taking their complaints to the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development.

A spokesperson for the ministry said it investigated complaints regarding PPE at three Homes First locations in March and April, including Willowdale.

A ministry inspector investigated by phone and no orders or requirements were issued.

“It was determined that all appropriate guidelines were being followed and no orders were issued,” according to the ministry.

An employee at Willowdale who spoke to the Star was diagnosed with COVID-19 and became so ill she thought she would die.

In the early days of the pandemic, she said she was told by management that she could wear a mask if she liked, but she had to provide them herself — and at that time, masks were impossible to buy in stores.

Initially, there were Lysol wipes on the lunch tables to keep the surfaces clean between shifts, but they were removed because management said they were being stolen.

After that, the wipes were locked in offices, the employee said.

There were sinks with soap and paper towels, where people could wash their hands before sitting down to eat, but they’d sometimes run out of paper towels, she added.

Staying the recommended two metres away from clients was difficult because of the layout of the shelter, she added. The lobby is where the intake office is located and the security desk, and it’s where people would line up for the cafeteria. People were constantly criss-crossing paths.

“It’s a pretty small bottleneck,” she said.

Mueller agrees there were issues around supplies, including Lysol and paper towels — in some cases they were being stolen, in some cases overused, she said, and it took a while to figure out how to address that.

Another concern for staff at Homes First was the high rotation among staff between homes, according to a third employee, who asked to remain nameless.

Homes First employs about 300 people, including about 175 relief staff who used to move between facilities, Mueller said.

She said that after the meeting between staff and management on March 23, Homes First began taking steps to end the practice, but it took several weeks to accomplish.

“I’m with them, I would have wanted it done faster,” Mueller said. She added that it simply wasn’t possible to manage the change more quickly.

Before the pandemic began, there were more than 7,000 people in Toronto’s shelter system, including nearly 3,000 in hotels and family settings, according to the city’s Shelter, Support and Housing Administration.

The city operates 11 shelter and respite locations; 61 are operated by community non-profit agencies like Homes First.

In order to increase social distancing, SSHA began moving people within existing programs on March 18, according to SSHA general manager Mary-Anne Bedard.

By the end of April, 1,400 shelter clients had been moved. The figure now tops 2,000, Bedard said in an interview.

Activists have criticized the city for not moving enough clients quickly enough, and for moving some to community centres, which don’t provide enough opportunities for social distancing or isolating people who begin showing symptoms.

A group of activists sued the city, which, as part of an interim settlement, agreed to meet physical distancing targets at all homeless shelters.

Bedard said community centres were chosen because they were easy to convert quickly.

“I know there is criticism out there, but I am confident that we’ve done everything as quickly as we could,” Bedard said.

While masks were provided to shelter staff in March, there was significant concern about the availability of PPE, and the pressure was on not to use valuable stock if it didn’t have to be used, she added.

She said SSHA doesn’t yet understand why there were outbreaks at some shelters and not others.

She warned that the numbers of infected at shelters will continue to rise.

“There’s good reason for that — because we are doing more testing,” she said.

If all the recommendations put forth by Willowdale staff early in the pandemic had been put into place, would the outcome have been different?

Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto and Toronto General Hospital, who has also worked with Willowdale, said masks may have made a small difference.

“The masks aren’t perfect — it’s not like you’re sealing the secretions from leaving your face — these are porous masks and you can still contaminate surfaces around you. Masks are helpful in these settings, but they aren’t the saviour,” he said.

Listening to front-line workers is critical, according to Tiziana Casciaro, professor of organizational behaviour at the University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management.

While drafting policies at the top — like the public health policies that informed decisions at Willowdale and other institutions — is the most efficient way to meet challenges, it has drawbacks.

“It allows top-down directives to take over the life of an organization without any opportunity for the bottom-up loop to ever close. This is something that I think applied in this particular case,” Casciaro said.

Bedard and Mueller meanwhile, say they did the best they could with the information at hand.

“There is always going to be, in retrospect, things that you look back on and say I wish, I could have, and we will learn from that for sure, but I don’t think we can second-guess the things that we did,” Bedard said.

Source: How a haven for refugees became home to the worst COVID-19 outbreak in Toronto’s shelter system

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

Paradkar: (Mostly) white covidiots at Trinity Bellwoods think the rules don’t apply to them. They’re right

2020/05/26 Leave a comment

Not only white folks can be covidiots. Ottawa has its share of visible minorities and whites who don’t respect social distancing visiting Dow’s Lake to look at the tulips.

André Picard notes the more fundamental issue at play, the inability of Toronto to free up more space for people (Don’t blame those who gather in parks – blame the city):

One look at images of Trinity Bellwoods Park on Saturday and it was instantly clear that idiocy is not just an affliction of the American middle class.

As a person with the luxury of living with greenery around me, I appreciate how difficult it must be to be trapped in a condo, sometimes even without balconies. I don’t blame people for wanting to break out of their confines when the sunny outside beckons so cheerily.

I get that there aren’t a lot of open spaces in the core of Toronto — although, for perspective, compared to many parts of the world, the city is positively lush.

What is bothersome is that while people around the world and even in our own city have been weathering the pandemic in far tougher conditions, in crappy apartments and crowded homes and in poverty, it was in Trinity Bellwoods that people somehow collectively felt entitled to say to hell with social distancing.

Their pleasure trumped our collective safety.

Trinity Bellwoods is considered a “gentrifying” neighbourhood with a higher concentration of white folks compared to the city. Like in all of the city, nearly half the resident are renters, and the same proportion have a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the 2016 census.

Based on social-media comments and real-estate agents’ descriptions, the 32-acre Trinity Bellwoods Park is a place to be seen. That’s a concept beyond my comprehension but on Saturday it meant that people could have gone to other parks (Stanley Park, Alexandra Park) but didn’t.

I wonder if the news about who is most at risk from COVID-19 — the racialized have-nots — has created a sense of inoculation among the haves. It’s affecting those people, not us, unless we’re old. Pandemics have always killed the poorest — mainly because those are the bodies the virus comes across. People who can’t afford to hunker down necessarily place themselves at risk to keep the rest of us in comfort. Gathering in large numbers simply offers the virus more bodies to feast on.

Photographs doing the rounds on social media showed thousands of what looked like white people milling around in crowds in the west-end park, as if millions of other Torontonians were not holding back from precisely that because common sense. And courtesy. And safety.

No doubt there were racialized folks among those gathered — fools come from all races — but they were protected by the overwhelming whiteness of those around them. Had that been a sea of Black and brown folks, we’d be having a very different conversation today.

While we may call Saturday’s hordes at Trinity Bellwoods covidiots or victims of squashed housing or poor communications by the province, to me they serve as a quick snapshot as to who feels entitled to the public space in this city, who gets scrutinized and who gets penalized for existing in it.

Of course, race matters, class matters.

A couple of weeks ago, a Tamil friend in our suburban neighbourhood was taking his children for a walk, observing all social-distancing protocols. A white man working on his front lawn chided him for being outside and told him to get off the sidewalk and walk on the road.

Last month, the father of a Black teen in Ottawa accused a trustee of harassing and photo-shaming his teenage son on Facebook for shooting hoops by himself. This was before there was clarity around the use of public parks.

In Brampton, Peel Police broke up groups of people who broke social-distancing rules by playing cricket and fined them $880 each.

It was also Eid this weekend when Muslims ended the month-long fasting of Ramadan. It’s a time of celebration, but Muslim Canadians shared stories on Twitter of a visible police presence in their communities to ensure they didn’t break social-distancing rules.

In Toronto, several homeless people have also been given $880 tickets for sitting on public benches, according to Policing the Pandemic, a map that tracks criminal charges across the country. The vast majority of police enforcement thus far has been about failing to comply with distancing rules, the researchers found.

So where was the weight of all that enforcement on Saturday? How many people were fined? Mayor John Tory said the people need to “do better” and sent in bylaw officers Sunday. Is that their only accountability? To be mocked en masse and face expressions of disappointment from our leaders but bear no individual responsibility?

What about community spread? Given that Ontario’s testing and contact tracing efforts are flailing — that we don’t actually know how community transmission is spreading — will we ever be able to track how many people were endangered by the indifference of the folks at Trinity Bellwoods Park?

Has the province sought the might of the police to keep all of us safe or only some of us safe? Why does the amount of melanin in the wrongdoer dictate who gets off, and whom we choose to perceive as wrongdoer in the first place?

Guess there’s no one quite like covidiots to expose the toxic hierarchies that operate under pretty ideals of egalitarianism.

Source: Shree Paradkar(Mostly) white covidiots at Trinity Bellwoods think the rules don’t apply to them. They’re right

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BLIZZARD: Canada’s potential first lady, Nazanin MacKay, is a born fighter

2020/05/26 Leave a comment

Interesting comment “even had people suggest they won’t vote for her husband because she’s Muslim. In fact, MacKay was raised Catholic and still practises that faith.” Likely reflects some parts of the Conservative base.

I knew her professionally when she was a board member of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and I was DG – Citizenship and Multiculturalism. My mini-review of The Tale of Two Nazanins can be found here):

In some ways, she is the daughter of a revolution.

Born in Tehran in 1979, the same year Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard came to power, Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay has a fierce passion for defending democracy and human rights — especially those of women and children.

Her father was the manager of a western hotel in Tehran at the time of the revolution. Unaware of the changes the takeover would make, he conducted business as usual, allowing men and women to mingle and allowing alcohol to be served in the hotel — all forbidden by the Islamist regime.

One day, the Revolutionary Guard broke in and arrested him. He was imprisoned and tortured, but was saved from summary execution by a fluke.

Freed as soon as his wounds healed, he fled to Spain and was joined by his family two months later. They moved to Canada shortly after.

MacKay, wife of Conservative Party of Canada leadership front-runner Peter MacKay, was a baby at the time. Still, her family history instilled in her a passion for human rights. She is co-founder of the group Stop Child Executions. [Inactive since January 2016]

In 2006, MacKay heard of another Nazanin in Iran. Nazanin Fatehi was about be executed after she fought off three men attempting to rape her and her niece. One of the men died. Fatehi was charged with murder.

After that campaign, other families got in touch with MacKay, asking for help saving their children in similar situations.

“I realized there were a lot of children condemned to execution,” she said.

The organization counted more than 160 children on death row in Iran, along with a handful in other countries who needed help. She estimates they were able to save 12 children.

MacKay has an impressive resume. The mother of three small children, she is a former Miss World Canada and runner-up in the global Miss World. She has a pilot’s licence and was once a recording artist. But her main focus is her fight for human rights of oppressed people.

Her favourite song from her recording days is Someday.

“It’s a revolution song, encouraging the people in Iran to rise up and one day, this regime that shackled the people will be gone and we’ll see a free and democratic country that takes into account the voices of the people,” she said.

She used the Miss World competition as a platform to shine a light on the rights of women and children.

One discouraging aspect of the ongoing leadership campaign is how her Mideast background has been misrepresented on social media. She has been falsely accused of supporting Omar Khadr’s $10.5-million payout, and even had people suggest they won’t vote for her husband because she’s Muslim. In fact, MacKay was raised Catholic and still practises that faith.

The accusations that she supported Khadr’s payout are nonsense.

“There’s nothing further from the truth,” she said.

At the time, she made it clear that Canada had national and international obligations to its citizens.

“Whether we like it or not, he’s a Canadian citizen. It’s horrible what he did and he definitely should not have been compensated with that money,” she said.

“But we’re a country that follows the rule of law and we have our own obligations. I didn’t agree necessarily that we repatriate him back to Canada and that he be set free like any other citizen. I said we have to wait and see what the courts order.”

She believes Khadr should redeem himself by giving the money to the family of his victim.

If her husband wins the leadership, don’t expect Nazanin to sit on the sidelines. She speaks her mind.

“He’ll definitely hear from me, whether he likes it or not,” she said with a laugh.

With degrees in international relations, political science and diplomacy, she has a lot to contribute.

Her story is quintessentially Canadian: like so many others. She came here for a better life, found it, and now gives back to her new country.

Source: BLIZZARD: Canada’s potential first lady, Nazanin MacKay, is a born fighter

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Alberta government considering immigration changes during pandemic

2020/05/25 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see what changes he proposes with respect to Alberta’s Provincial Nominee Program as well as how he informs the overall debate around post-pandemic immigration policy:

Premier Jason Kenney says changes are coming to Alberta’s immigration practices as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Although the government won’t yet release details, the premier said the province can accommodate fewer newcomers as a result of global travel restrictions and Alberta’s economic crisis. He made the comments during a Facebook live video question and answer session on Wednesday night.

He said the government will push Alberta employers to “do everything they possibly can to look within Alberta to the huge and growing number of unemployed people” when hiring.

A formal policy announcement should come within weeks, a government spokesperson said Thursday.

However, immigration lawyers cautioned any rapid changes to immigration rules could have unintended consequences.

Although business prospects are rough right now, Calgary lawyer Evelyn Ackah said they will bounce back. When they do, they’re going to need immigrants to do the jobs Canadians just won’t do, she said.

Few Canadians apply for jobs in slaughterhouses or at fast-food restaurants, lawyers say.

Ackah said as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, prospective immigrants are contacting her from China and India. They’re interested in buying and running businesses in Canada. Those job creators are who the province should be attracting, she said.

“Quick changes, boom boom boom, they have long repercussions and it takes a long time to resolve, and so, I really want to not let this crisis change the direction and the trajectory of immigration’s process,” she said.

Limited provincial control

With immigration being federal jurisdiction, there are limited steps Alberta’s government could take to curtail newcomers, said Megan Dawson, a partner at McCuaig Durocher in Edmonton.

The Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program allows the provincial government to select immigrants who are already working temporarily in Alberta to apply for permanent resident status if their skills and education fill an economic need in the province.

It’s a joint program with the federal and provincial government. In 2019, the province sponsored 6,000 immigrants through the program. From January 2015 to March 2020, nearly 50,000 people came to Alberta through the program, said Adrienne South, press secretary to the minister of labour and immigration.

The nominated immigrants are a fraction of the more than 232,000 people who became Canadian permanent residents during the same time period and intended to live in Alberta.

The federal government controls the admission of temporary foreign workers, refugees and other express entry newcomers, Dawson said.

Employers must often recruit workers with specialized knowledge and skills when people with the right training can’t be found in the province, she said.

Those economic immigrants often train Albertans and help companies create new jobs for locals, she said.

Alberta has a list of workers it doesn’t need, including teachers, actors, athletes and real estate agents. Dawson said the province could potentially expand that list of categories.

“There already are safeguards in place to show, that we did our best to hire Canadians for this job first,” she said.

“I think the ramifications could be potentially unintended or unexpected in a negative sense for some Alberta businesses if they’re not able to staff their business with foreign workers.”

Source: Alberta government considering immigration changes during pandemic

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Removal of Islamic Motifs Leaves Xinjiang’s Id Kah Mosque ‘a Shell For Unsuspecting Visitors’

2020/05/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

Since 2016, the Chinese authorities have been systematically destroying mosques, cemeteries, and other religious structures and sites across the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Last year, the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) published a report detailing this campaign, titled “Demolishing Faith: The Destruction and Desecration of Uyghurs Mosques and Shrines”; the report was referenced in the 2020 annual report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The report uses geolocation and other techniques to show that anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 mosques, shrines, and other religious sites in the XUAR were destroyed between 2016 and 2019. In some cases, only the domes and towers were destroyed from certain structures, while in others, characteristically Islamic elements such as stars and crescents, domes, and scripture plaques were removed. In some cases, entire mosques have also been felled.

China has made no official response to the report or to claims about the large-scale and widespread destruction it has undertaken. However, the Chinese authorities have continued to bring international visitors to mosques such as Id Kah in Kashgar, as well as to other religious sites around the region, and to publish articles depicting the mosque in state-run media, all in support of the official line that Uyghurs enjoy religious freedom in the region.

Id Kah is the largest and oldest mosque in the XUAR and the largest mosque in all of China. Uyghurs have long regarded Id Kah as a symbol of Islamic culture and a representative of Islamic architecture in the region. While the mosque is still standing mostly intact today, there are some very alarming signs that it is merely a shell of what it used to be. In 2018, authorities removed the star-and-crescent structures from the tops of the mosque’s dome and minarets, along with the colorful scriptural plaque that long hung above its front entrance. As of 2020, those features appear not to have been restored to the mosque. The plaque, which dates to hijra 1325 (1908 C.E.) contains Quranic scriptures along with information about the construction of the mosque and the identity of the artist who made the sign.

Ahead of Eid al-Fitr, which on May 23 will mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, RFA’s Uyghur Service spoke with Turghunjan Alawudun, director of the Religious Affairs Committee for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) exile group, and Henry Szadziewski, a senior researcher with the UHRP, about the significance of the missing plaque.

A close up view of the plaque adorning the front entrance of Id Kah mosque, taken before its removal.
A close up view of the plaque adorning the front entrance of Id Kah mosque, taken before its removal. RFA

Alawudun: The disappearance of the scriptural plaque from the entrance to Id Kah is one aspect of the Chinese regime’s evil policies meant to eliminate the Islamic faith among Uyghurs, to eliminate Uyghur faith, literary works, and language—and Uyghurs themselves. This scriptural plaque above the door into Id Kah, like the [mosque’s] minarets, has an Islamic character and is a symbol that has been there from the founding of the mosque until today. The Chinese regime can’t bear this, it can’t stand it, and the inner hatred they feel toward Uyghurs has boiled over such that they had the plaque removed.

They’ve left Id Kah [itself] there for the international community, as part of a bid to fool the world. By taking visitors from Islamic countries there every once in a while to see it, showing it to international visitors who come to investigate [the situation in the region], and sharing it in the media every now and then, they’re pursuing policies that deceive the world. Even so, we can still see that the cruel things that China is doing—the destruction by the Chinese regime of things connected to Uyghurs, Uyghur culture, symbols of the Uyghur people, expressions of Uyghur culture—are signs of the Chinese regime’s horrible plan to eliminate the Uyghurs.

Szadziewski: Religious freedom is not a reality for Uyghurs. Across their homeland, mosques, shrines, and other sacred spaces have been bulldozed into history. In the camps, Uyghurs are indoctrinated into the supposed evils of religion. Id Kah in Kashgar has remained standing. Its disappearance would cause outrage given its importance. The significance of its existence to the Chinese authorities is to demonstrate to the world observance of Uyghurs’ religious freedoms. However, the removal of Islamic motifs from the building tells a different story. It tells us Id Kah is being stripped of religious meaning to become a shell for unsuspecting visitors. There is no reason to remove Islamic motifs from the building other than to demonstrate to Uyghurs that belief in Islam belongs to the past. As such, the despoiling of Id Kah signals a move toward an effective ban on the Islamic faith.

Source: Removal of Islamic Motifs Leaves Xinjiang’s Id Kah Mosque ‘a Shell For Unsuspecting Visitors’

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

EU nationals at risk of being denied UK citizenship after home office creates shock new tests

2020/05/25 1 Comment

UK just cannot get immigration right in terms of process:

EU nationals in the UK are at risk of being denied full citizenship after the home office threw up shock new barriers, despite ministers insisting “we want you to stay”.

Fast-track rules had been expected for the estimated 3.6 million people currently applying to remain in the UK, as many seek the extra security of permanent residency rights.

But, under changes slipped out on a Friday, some EU nationals have now been told to produce further evidence that they have been living in the UK legally – even after securing so-called ‘settled status’.

The demands include that they took out comprehensive sickness insurance (CSI) to cover any periods of unemployment, when there was no such requirement at the time.

This was required for settled status until dropped by Theresa May three years ago, after widespread criticism – but is now revived for permanent residence, the path to full citizenship.

The3million group, representing EU nationals in the UK, described the new hurdles as potentially “devastating”, amid a flood of applications for the extra security provided by UK citizenship.

People were now “at the mercy” of immigration officers using their discretion – when a lack of CSI led to a third of residency applications being rejected in the past – and after paying a whopping application fee of £1,300.

One EU national, Leticia, said: “I am worried that my application will now be refused because I didn’t provide evidence for something that I wasn’t asked to provide evidence for, when I submitted my application. How is that fair?”

And a second, Larissa, protested: “This has just happened to me. Submitted my naturalisation application in January and three days ago I was told to provide evidence of private medical insurance from 2013!”

Maike Bohn, the co-founder of the3million, said the two women were among more than 400 EU nationals who had made their fears known in just a few days.

“They see British citizenship as the way to guarantee that their rights are safe, because the settlement scheme could be tampered with and does not do that,” she told The Independent.

“It would be devastating to have an application rejected in this way, having invested months in gathering evidence for settled status in some cases and after spending huge amounts of money.”

The new rules come after criticism that settled status – far from protecting all the rights of the people most affected by Brexit, as claimed – will fail to treat EU nationals as equals.

Ministers have repeatedly been warned that harder-to-reach people, such as the elderly, children in care and those who are being exploited, will slip through the net.

On Thursday, it was revealed that the number of applications for settled status has plummeted with the closure of phone advice lines and scanning centres because of the Covid-19 lockdown – sparking calls for more time.

Meanwhile, under plans to end free movement on 1 January, EU nationals will require a visa to work, rent a home, or use public services – despite being told only a passport would be needed, before the deadline for settled status applications in June next year.

And the government refused pleas to give EU nationals the same physical proof of their right to stay as other immigrants – instead of relying on a digital system – to prevent “another Windrush scandal” ​ in the years to come.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour’s shadow home secretary, demanded “clarity”, adding: “With the Windrush scandal, we have seen what happens when a government does not have fairness and the national interest at the heart of our immigration system and this must not happen again.”

The new naturalisation guidance, issued on 15 May, is the first time the home office has said that having settled status is not sufficient to be granted permanent residency.

It has told officials to consider “on the balance of probabilities whether they were here: as a qualified person (such as a worker, student, self-employed, self-sufficient, retired or incapacitated person) [or] as the family member of such a person.”

The guidance adds: “Where appropriate, you must also be satisfied that the person was lawfully in the UK, with comprehensive sickness insurance (CSI).”

To become a British citizen, a process known as naturalisation, a person must prove they have lived in the UK – legally – for five years, three if married to a Briton.

But a home office spokesperson insisted there was no change on guidance issued in 2018, saying: “These requirements are not new and have always been in place.

“If someone wishes to make an application for citizenship, they are very welcome to do so through the usual routes and fulfil the requirements for naturalisation.”

Source: EU nationals at risk of being denied UK citizenship after home office creates shock new tests

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Horgan says lessons to be learned from Komagata Maru racism during pandemic

2020/05/25 Leave a comment

Good messaging:

B.C. Premier John Horgan is paying tribute to nearly 400 South Asians who were forced to leave Canada due to discriminatory policies more than a century ago.

Horgan says racism faced by the Sikh, Muslim and Hindu men who arrived at Vancouver’s harbour aboard the Komagata Maru on May 23, 1914, hurt generations of people.

Horgan said that when he looks out the window of his Vancouver office, he can see the exact spot where the ship was moored for two months as those aboard endured cruel conditions.

Federal laws banned immigration of South Asians and the vessel had to return to India.

Horgan said the anniversary of the ship’s arrival in B.C. makes him wonder how the students, labourers and ex-soldiers from the British Indian regiment aboard would have enriched Canada if given the opportunity to stay in the province.

“Racism is part of our history in British Columbia, and our work continues to right the wrongs of the past,” Horgan said.

“This event stands as a reminder for how racism, discrimination and hate have hurt generations of people. But it also reminds us of the incredible resiliency in our province — including all those who stand up against injustice and work to make B.C. a place where everyone is welcome and safe.

“As we live through the COVID-19 pandemic, racism has tarnished our community’s response. People have been attacked and assaulted. Racism has no place in our province. We must stand firm against hate and learn from our past as we build a better, more inclusive future.”

B.C. formally apologized in the legislature chamber in 2008 for its role in the Komagata Maru tragedy.

Horgan had earlier spoken out against racism toward Asians during the pandemic.

Vancouver police said this week that the number of anti-Asian racism cases since March had jumped markedly compared with the same period last year.

Police say they have opened 29 cases since B.C. declared a state of emergency over the pandemic, compared with only four cases of racism in 2019. The first case of COVID-19 was found in China.

Source: Horgan says lessons to be learned from Komagata Maru racism during pandemic

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

New data show that minorities and low-income earners are more susceptible to COVID-19

2020/05/25 Leave a comment

Yet another article on racial disparities, based upon Toronto Public Health census track-level data:

When the public image of Pearson International Airport turned from travel hub to petri dish in March, Rajinder Aujla’s friends and colleagues felt they had no choice but to drive toward it every day, again and again. As airport taxi and limo drivers, this is their livelihood.

A month later, Mr. Aujla, president of the Airport Taxi Association, started hearing about what may have been the consequences of all those trips. By his count, 10 drivers have died in the past month, at least six of whom tested positive for COVID-19. One was Karam Singh Punian, a close friend of Mr. Aujla, who died May 4.

He estimates that about 20 drivers contracted the virus since April. Most of the 1,500 drivers who make their living ferrying passengers to and from the airport are immigrants from places such as India, Pakistan and Egypt, he said.

“They’re all self-employed. They don’t have access to health benefits,” Mr. Aujla said. “Some of the people are the only breadwinners. Some of them have others in their family working, but their spouses are mostly out of jobs now. Everyone is staying at home.”

Preliminary data support the idea that COVID-19 is hitting marginalized communities harder than others. The situation will only worsen as provinces reopen, according to front-line health care workers and experts who study health inequities.

Public-health messages about staying home, which are aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19, have largely ignored the realities faced by low-income workers, people who are homeless or other at-risk groups, said Andrew Boozary, a doctor who is executive director of health and social policy at University Health Network. He also works with Toronto’s Inner City Health Associates, a group that provides care to people living on the street and in shelters.

“Physical distancing is a privilege by postal code,” he said. “We’re seeing a public-health message that is speaking to a certain part of the population. There’s a completely separate curve that is … facing most of the cases and deaths now.”

A recent Toronto Public Health analysis of COVID-19 cases in the city showed that neighbourhoods in Toronto with the lowest incomes, highest rates of unemployment and highest concentrations of newcomers consistently had twice the number of cases of COVID-19 and more than twice the rate of hospital admissions.

That analysis was based on COVID-19 cases tracked up until May 10. It looked at census tracts throughout the city and divided Toronto into five groups for each category of analysis: income, proportion of newcomers and unemployment.

While the lowest-income group had 205 cases of COVID-19 and 34 admissions to hospital per population of 100,000, the highest income group had only 94 cases and 15 admissions.

Neighbourhoods that had the highest concentration of immigrants recorded 194 cases of COVID-19 and 31 admissions per 100,000 people, compared with the ones with the lowest number of immigrants, which had 93 cases and 12 admissions.

The same pattern emerged when it came to unemployment: Areas with the highest levels of unemployment had 198 cases and 30 admissions per 100,000, versus those with the lowest unemployment, which had 98 cases and 15 admissions.

Toronto Public Health is now tracking demographic data (including race and income) to give an even more accurate picture of who is getting infected.

Arjumand Siddiqi, Canada Research Chair in population health equity, said many of the essential workers keeping society going during COVID-19, including janitors, long-term care workers, grocery clerks and transit operators, fall into the at-risk categories.

“They tend to be lower wage, and they tend to consist of black and brown people,” said Dr. Siddiqi, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. “Every time we see a long-term care worker on TV, it’s almost invariably a black woman.”

In Montreal, Canada’s hardest-hit city, many of those workers live in Montréal-Nord, which has the highest concentration of COVID-19 cases and has become the epicentre of the outbreak.

This low-income enclave is a “springboard” for immigrants from places such as Haiti and North Africa, many of whom live in close quarters in high-rise apartment buildings and work in the vulnerable health and service sectors. All these factors have contributed to its high rate of infection, said Bochra Manai, executive director of Parole d’excluEs, a social-services organization that works in the neighbourhood.

The area had 2,593 cases per 100,000 residents as of May 21, by far the most of any borough and well over double the city average. (In part because of its government structure, made up of 19 boroughs, Montreal has more precise neighbourhood data on cases and deaths.)

In Canada’s largest cities, points out Kwame McKenzie, the CEO of health-policy think thank the Wellesley Institute, accommodation is expensive, “and we know that people with lower incomes tend to be in more concentrated or overcrowded places where it is more difficult to physically isolate.”

That was precisely the challenge Fahim Sultana Rigi faced in late April.

After breathing difficulties landed her in hospital and she tested positive for COVID-19, Ms. Rigi was told to self-isolate at home for two weeks.

This was no small feat: She shares a three-bedroom apartment in an 11-floor housing co-op in the densely populated St. Lawrence neighbourhood in Toronto with her husband, Emad Hussain, and four children. Her eldest son was temporarily moved to a room with a sibling, Mr. Hussain shared a room with two of his other children, and Ms. Rigi was in a room on her own.

As his two-year-old cried and begged to see his mother, Mr. Hussain tried his best to help maintain the quarantine. His work ground to a halt as he took on the job of parenting his children solo.

His wife is only 41 but had pre-existing health conditions – thyroid problems and diabetes – so he worried about her recovery.

Research suggests immigrants and low-income earners are more likely to suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic illnesses, and those with these pre-existing conditions can face higher rates of hospital admissions and worse outcomes if they are infected with COVID-19.

Just a few days into isolation, Ms. Rigi woke early one morning struggling to breathe. She summoned her husband to her side and frantically gestured to call 911. After spending nine hours in hospital and receiving oxygen, Ms. Rigi was discharged again, continued to isolate and has since recovered – though she still suffers from body pain and exhaustion.

Still, Mr. Hussain can’t forget the fear he felt in those first days that spurred some grim research.

“If I got infected, or if I passed away or my wife passed away, how could we manage those children? Those were the legal things I was looking for,” he said.

Source: New data show that minorities and low-income earners are more susceptible to COVID-19 ‘Physical distancing is a privilege by postal code,’ one doctor says of the dichotomy of infection rates between marginalized communities and wealthier neighbourhoods

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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