Canada’s pandemic plans must guard against the rise of racism

2020/05/14 Leave a comment

Of course, public officials should consider all impacts of policies and programs on different segments of the population to reduce the incidence of disparities and discrimination. Equally, better and race-based data on COVID-19 is needed.

But government officials at all levels have taken pains to speak out against racist incidents against Asian Canadians and by and large, Canadian policies and programs have been relatively balanced with respect to their impact on citizens, permanent residents and even some groups of temporary residents such as international students.

It would appear that the issue lies more with temporary workers and some permanent residents, working or living in crowded condition, with many of these being visible minorities (e.g., meat packing plants, personal support workers etc). Clearly, better regulation and improved working conditions are needed for these groups.

As for the various and unacceptable attacks on Asian Canadians, people need to report them to the police, police need to follow-up on these attacks and lay charges as much as possible (and ensure more accurate data that would be captured in the annual hate crime statistics.

But having been involved in government support for anti-racism programming, I remain sceptical that these programs will ever reach those with strong racist or xenophobic views. Some people, unfortunately, are unreachable:

The COVID-19 pandemic has come with virulent anti-Asian racism. Fear has led to the use of the term “Chinese virus,” the revival of the slur “Chink,” the perpetuation of myths that Chinese people eat bats, an increase in violent attacks against Asians and unwarranted blame placed on Filipino workers for the spread of the virus. All these incidents of racism have happened in a span of eight weeks, leading to a public health concern: people who are feared and stigmatized may delay seeking care, increasing the vulnerability of that racialized population. And no one should have to fear violence when they step outside their door.

Canada’s pandemic plan needs to consider the fear that accompanies any new contagion. When a virus’s origin is traced to Asia, the plan must include not only an evaluation of whether its measures encourage anti-Asian sentiment but also strategies to mitigate racist perceptions that equate Asians with the virus.

Racism driven by fear of infectious disease is not new. During the SARS outbreak, the public became fearful of Asians. Earlier infectious disease epidemics were associated with specific ethnic groups, too: the bubonic plague was linked to the Chinese in 1900, and the 1993 hantavirus infection was dubbed the Navajo disease. Past episodes demonstrate that fear of foreigners can also spread beyond the context of disease to influence immigration policies. Historically, Canada has selectively admitted some racialized persons as cheap labour while excluding others to pacify or appease anxiety among the White population. Chinese workers were allowed in, in the 19th and 20th centuries, but had to pay a hefty tax; Sikhs on board the Komagata Maru were turned away with tragic results in 1914.

Border restrictions are among the many layers in Canada’s response to the current pandemic. Initially the border was closed to all foreign nationals except US citizens, but the government had to walk back this exception. Canada currently admits temporary foreign workers, international students and refugee claimants while barring entry to almost everyone else, including US citizens and even immediate family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents, unless they are providing essential services.

It is too soon to tell whether border closures have been effective in stemming the spread of the disease. But early government data do not show Asian travellers at the top of the list of carriers. As of April 7, 42 percent of all non-resident travellers entering Canada who had COVID-19 were from Europe, and 35 percent were from Asia. As of April 17, 404 people travelling from the US had COVID-19, as opposed to 5 people from China.

The border is not completely shut, and the measures do not directly prohibit the entry of Asians, but that does not mean the restrictions affect everyone equally. As in the past, the inclusion and exclusion of persons is selective. The exclusion of non-essential persons may be aimed, in part, at reducing fear and anxiety in Canada, reinforcing the narrative that foreigners — Asians — are the primary vectors of the virus.

Temporary foreign workers and asylum seekers have filled labour needs in essential services, most notably in health care, agriculture and food processing, where they are risking their lives. Yet they are being blamed for outbreaks in their workplaces despite the fact that it is their working conditions that are responsible for the virus spreading. Reports of exploitation and abuse of temporary foreign workers are not new but still troubling. Cramped and crowded living and working conditions, low pay and lack of safety or protection gear, for example, are the direct result of their temporary immigration status. Outbreaks on farms and in meat packing plants have been blamed on persons of Filipino descent. These experiences should reignite efforts to create permanent pathways for immigration for those working in essential services, not only to reduce abuse and exploitation of workers but also to prevent the misunderstanding that it is foreign workers who are spreading disease.

Policy-makers have many factors to consider. It’s not easy to deal with a new, unknown and unpredictable harm. Still, public health officials should consider whether any restrictive measures used to protect the public may also promote racism, stigmatization and discrimination. Pandemic plans should also include strategies to shape an accurate public understanding of how the virus is transmitted and reduce unfounded fears that can stimulate racist assumptions and perceptions.

For Asian Canadians, until there is a more pointed effort to address racism in the official response to the pandemic, we know that no matter what we do, fear will permeate public reaction and manifest itself in harmful ways. We can put our lives at risk serving on the front lines in health care or in ensuring our food supply is stable, and one of us can even serve as Canada’s top doctor, but relying on racialized persons to be model immigrants should not be a strategy. The responsibility to address racism should be borne not by the people experiencing it but by those shaping law and policy.

Scientific data show racialized persons are more likely to die from COVID-19 than White people and that the difference may not be caused by pre-existing differences in wealth, health, education or living arrangements. It’s a good first step that some governments are collecting race-based data on the impact of the disease, but more action is required. All governments must acknowledge that how people perceive the spread of this virus can place a disproportionate burden on racialized persons, and that racialized people will experience the pandemic differently, whether they are Asian, Black, Indigenous or Latinx. Race-based analyses must be part of all public health measures in a pandemic.

Source: Canada’s pandemic plans must guard against the rise of racism

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In Israel, Modern Medicine Grapples With Ghosts of the Third Reich

2020/05/14 Leave a comment

Interesting account of the ethnical and personal issues involved and their sensible resolution:

The explosion flung him skyward, legs first, before he crashed to the ground.

It was June 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian intifada. Dvir Musai, then a 13-year-old Israeli schoolboy from a religious Jewish settlement, was on a class cherry-picking trip in the southern West Bank. On his way back to the bus, he stepped on a mine laid by Palestinian militants and was gravely wounded, along with two other boys.

“There was a lot of smoke, clumps of earth falling, a smell of burning and gunpowder,” Mr. Musai, now 31, recalled.

Decades of agony followed. Mr. Musai’s right foot felt as if it were permanently afire. And then last year, a surgeon offered him hope — and a disquieting disclosure.

In pre-op at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, Dr. Madi el-Haj told his patient that the anatomical atlas he would use to guide him through the intricate nerve pathways had been produced by Nazis. Its illustrations are believed to be based on the dissected victims of the Nazi court system under Hitler’s Third Reich.

If there were objections, Dr. el-Haj told the Musai family, he could operate without it — but it would be harder. He noted that there was rabbinical approval for the book’s use.

Mr. Musai’s mother, Chana, had lost relatives in the Holocaust.

“She said, ‘If it can help now, we’ll use it,’” Mr. Musai recalled.

That gut-wrenching decision went to the heart of a longstanding debate about the ethics of drawing on knowledge derived from the Nazis’ expansive medical and scientific experimentation — and in this case, the ethics of using the textbook, “Atlas of Topographical and Applied Human Anatomy.”

The book, by Eduard Pernkopf, stands out for its accuracy and detail, and even in an age of state-of-the-art imaging, some surgeons, among them those who perform peripheral nerve procedures, still find its drawings invaluable.

In a perverse twist, the more advanced the relatively new field of peripheral nerve surgery becomes, the more reliant on the atlas some of its practitioners say they find themselves. That is because even high-tech imaging is of limited use to the complex discipline, in which doctors treat problems like chronic pain caused by nerves that are damaged or trapped.

Pernkopf began work on the atlas at the University of Vienna, where he became chairman of anatomy in 1933, the year he joined the Nazi party. With Hitler’s 1938 annexation of Austria, he became dean of the medical faculty, then president of the university.

The illustrators to whom Pernkopf turned to produce the atlas were also Nazi enthusiasts. Three of the four illustrators incorporated swastikas, SS lightning bolts and other Nazi insignia into their signatures — hallmarks of evil airbrushed out of later editions.

Less is clear about the people whose bodies were dissected so that the illustrators could produce their work. Over the years, there have been questions about whether some had been killed in Hitler’s death camps. Those questions remain unresolved, but many experts believe that most of the prisoners were Austrians condemned in the courts.

After the war, Pernkopf spent three years in an Allied prison camp but was not charged with war crimes. He continued work on the atlas until his death in 1955.

A two-volume edition was published in five languages, with the first American edition coming out in 1963. Elsevier, a European scientific publisher that currently holds the copyright, stopped printing it on ethical grounds, but the volumes can be found in private collections and purchased on eBay and Amazon.

Scholars first raised questions about the origins of the atlas in the 1980s as the Cold War’s “Great Silence” about the Nazis’ medical legacy began to crack.

By the 1990s, the controversy was drawing wider public attention.

Dr. Howard Israel, an oral surgeon at Columbia University who had routinely used the atlas, exposed the Nazi symbols in the artists’ signatures included in early editions of the book.

Then Dr. Israel and Dr. William Seidelman, a Toronto physician, turned for help to Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, asking it to press the University of Vienna to investigate the background of the atlas — and of the dissected cadavers its authors used. After some initial reluctance, the university agreed.

“Things started to unravel,” recounted Dr. Seidelman, who now lives in Jerusalem.

From 1938 to 1945, the university’s anatomical institute received more than 1,370 bodies of prisoners executed by the Vienna court system, according to the findings of an investigative committee. More than half had been political prisoners — people targeted by the Nazi regime. At that time in Austria, joking about Hitler was enough to warrant execution, often by decapitation.

Dr. el-Haj, the Hadassah surgeon, said he was first introduced to the atlas while studying under Dr. Susan Mackinnon, a pioneer in peripheral nerve surgery, at Washington University in St. Louis.

“She knew I came from Israel — she thought I was a Jewish guy,” he recalled.

That he was, in fact, an Arab Muslim from the Galilee changed nothing.

“I was shocked,” he said. “It’s a matter of humanity.”

Dr. Mackinnon bought her first copy in the early 1980s as a young plastic surgeon in Baltimore, and used it to guide many of her surgical procedures.

But troubled by the provenance of the illustrations, Dr. Mackinnon photocopied the first scholarly articles about Pernkopf’s past a few years later and tucked them into the book as a constant reminder.

In 2015, Dr. Mackinnon and her longtime associate Andrew Yee wanted to share drawings from the atlas on an online teaching platform, and sought an opinion from Dr. Sabine Hildebrandt, a Boston physician who has studied the Third Reich.

An international effort was already underway to determine how to handle unearthed human remains and medical specimens from the Holocaust era.

Dr. Hildebrandt took on Dr. Mackinnon’s query and consulted with other experts, giving rise to a special set of recommendations regarding the Pernkopf atlas in a document known as the “Vienna Protocol.” It was written by a prominent American rabbi and ethicist, Joseph A. Polak, and formally adopted by a 2017 symposium of experts at Yad Vashem. Under the protocol, the atlas can be used if there is full disclosure about its origins.

In a recent survey of an international group of nerve surgeons, Dr. Mackinnon and Mr. Yee found that 59 percent of the 182 respondents were aware of the Pernkopf atlas, 41 percent had used it at some point and 13 percent were currently using it.

But the debate is hardly settled.

Dr. Justin M. Sacks, chief of the division of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Washington University, said he had never come across the atlas until he arrived at the department this year. He argued that it was morally and ethically wrong to use it and that there were perfectly adequate substitutes available in print or online.

“I’m not looking to stir a controversy,” he said in an interview, “but I’m looking to put it where it belongs: in a museum.”

Dr. el-Haj said that while the alternatives might be good enough in other medical fields, when it came to peripheral nerve surgery, they were no match for Pernkopf.

One of eight siblings, Dr. el-Haj grew up in a farming village and aspired to become a nerve surgeon, he said, in the hope of helping his father, who as a young man was left with a paralyzed arm and leg by a work accident. After studying in the United States, Dr. el-Haj returned to Jerusalem with his own Pernkopf volumes in August 2018.

Around the same time, Mr. Musai, who had undergone dozens of operations since his injury, returned to his doctors. Now a married father of two, he could barely walk. His foot could not bear the weight of a sheet at night.

He was referred to Dr. el-Haj.

From his days as a medical student at Hadassah, Dr. el-Haj, 40, remembered Mr. Musai as an angry teenager in terrible pain who harbored a hatred of Arabs.

Mr. Musai acknowledges that was the case.

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12 New Immigration Ideas for the 21st Century

2020/05/14 Leave a comment

Compiled by the libertarian Cato Institute, a range of ideas ranging from the practical to the more ideological.

On the more practical side:

  • Chapter 1: Automatic Adjustment of the H-1B Visas and Employment‐ Based Green Cards Caps
  • Chapter 2: Reducing Long Wait Times for Family‐​Sponsored and Employment‐​Based Immigrants
  • Chapter 3: Shared Border, Shared Future: A US-Mexican Bilateral Worker Agreement
  • Chapter 5: State-Sponsored Visas (similar to the Provincial Nominee Program)

  • Chapter 6: The Community Visa: A Local Solution to America’s Immigration Deadlock

    Chapter 8: Immigration Moneyball (variant of points system/express entry)

On the more wish list and/or ideological side:

  • Chapter 3: Shared Border, Shared Future: A U.S.-Mexican Bilateral Worker Agreement
  • Chapter 4: Constructing a US-Canadian Bilateral Labor Agreement
  • Chapter 7: Building a Congressional Constituency for Immigration through “Earmarks”
  • Chapter 9: Immigration Designed to Enhance American Lives (IDEAL)
  • Chapter 10: Don’t Restrict Immigration, Tax It
  • Chapter 11: Choosing Immigrants through Prediction Markets
  • Chapter 12: Transferable Citizenship (citizenship as a traceable good)

Congress has repeatedly considered and rejected comprehensive immigration reform legislation over the past few decades. The most bitter debates were in 2006, 2007, and 2013 when comprehensive bills passed one house of Congress and not the other. Those reforms each failed for particular reasons—groundswells of populist opposition, Democratic senators working with Republicans to remove guest worker provisions, or Republican failure to bring it to the floor in the House of Representatives—but the bills were all basically identical.

Those failed immigration reforms all included three policies: legalize illegal immigrants currently living in the United States, increase border and interior enforcement of the immigration laws, and liberalize legal permanent immigration and temporary migration through an expanded guest worker visa program for lower‐​skilled workers. A domestic amnesty for illegal immigrants was supposed to clear the black market and allow those who have made a life here to settle permanently; extra enforcement was supposed to reduce the potential for illegal immigrants to come in the future; liberalized immigration was supposed to boost U.S. economic prosperity and drive future would‐​be illegal immigrants into the legal market.

In theory, this comprehensive approach was supposed to make future amnesties unnecessary by fixing the laws that encouraged illegal immigration in the first place. The bill Congress considered in 2013, the last attempt at comprehensive immigration reform, followed the same model, which is a major reason the bill failed. For instance, the guest worker provisions for lower‐​skilled workers were all clones and the result of negotiations between the same stakeholders.

Liberalizing legal immigration is the most important component of workable, long‐​term reform. The legal immigration system sets and regulates numbers, procedures, and the types of foreigners who can come to the United States from abroad to work, live, and in some cases eventually naturalize. Providing legal paths for more immigrants, either for temporary work or permanent citizenship, is the best way to secure the border and would help provide for the future prosperity of the United States. The government cannot regulate a black market of illegal immigrants, but it can regulate legal immigrants.

Expanding legal immigration is a worthy goal, but there are many ways to accomplish it. The mission of this collection of essays from policy analysts, economists, political scientists, journalists, and advocates from around the world is to provide new policy suggestions that future Congresses could use to liberalize the legal immigration system. We intentionally avoided seeking proposals from the usual stakeholders and included many original ideas that could increase legal immigration or improve the selection of legal immigrants. The essays fall into four broad categories based on how much they would transform the current legal immigration system. The first category includes proposed rule changes that would substantially improve the current system. In one essay, Daniel Griswold of the Mercatus Center proposes that Congress abolish the static numerical caps on certain visas and instead create a built‐​in numerical escalator that automatically grows the number of visas as employment grows. For example, the number of H‐​1Bs issued would increase as employment in certain hightechnology sectors increases. Similarly, Stuart Anderson of the National Foundation for American Policy recommends addressing the extreme wait times that skilled immigrants currently face by guaranteeing them legal permanent residence within five years, essentially replacing numerical quotas with a specific wait time.

The second category of essays includes discussions of adding visa categories to the current system. Many of the ideas in this category are based on older visa programs that have been discontinued, visa programs in other countries, logical extensions to the current U.S. system, or admissions policies in other public institutions, such as military academies.

Michael Clemens of the Center for Global Development proposes a jointly regulated migration system with Mexico based on lessons learned from the past and best practices from other bilateral migration programs enacted around the world. Michelangelo Landgrave, a political science doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside, proposes a similar policy for Canada based on the principles of reciprocity in work authorization and limited access to welfare, of which, according to survey data, Americans and Canadians alike approve.

David Bier of the Cato Institute proposes state‐​based visas that would allow state governments to accept immigrants based on their diverse economic conditions. In a similar vein, coauthors Jack Graham and Rebekah Smith propose a system whereby local governments would work with private sponsors to bring immigrants into their communities. Both essays highlight the importance of engaging state governments to implement important reforms.

Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform offers a proposal inspired by the acceptance policies of U.S. military academies. It would allow each member of Congress to sponsor 100 immigrants for legal permanent residence— similar to how they nominate recruits for U.S. military academies.

The third category includes proposed changes that would transform how the current U.S. immigration system works.

George Mason University professor Justin Gest envisions a major overhaul of the selection process for immigrants. Under his system, the government would collect much better data on various immigrant outcomes and track immigrants over time to see how they integrate. It would then assign points for immigrants with certain characteristics that the data show correlate with immigrant success.

Steve Kuhn of IDEAL Immigration proposes selling visas to employers, provided they’ve made job offers to foreign workers and paid the workers premiums that match the cost. Nathan Smith’s proposal would increase the number of immigrants admitted but charge them an extra 20 percent tax on their incomes so long as they reside and work in the United States.

The fourth category and the last two fundamental policy reform ideas come from Robin Hanson, associate professor of economics at George Mason University. His reforms would increase immigration, cause more Americans to profit directly from the immigration system, and provide a way to select immigrants that are more beneficial to the United States.

Hanson’s first essay is similar to Gest’s proposal but relies on a more decentralized decisionmaking process to select immigrants using prediction markets. Under this proposal, the public would place cash bets in an open market on which immigrants would succeed based on objectively measurable criteria such as net‐​fiscal impact. The immigration system would then select those priced the highest. In his second essay, Hanson suggests letting U.S. citizens sell or lease their citizenship to noncitizens abroad in exchange for leaving the country. This would monetize the value of American citizenship and create an asset held by every American.

These proposed reforms are just a few of the new and interesting ideas out there. Hopefully, some will be incorporated into future bills; others could spark new and more creative ways of how to change immigration laws. We don’t endorse every essay in this paper, but the stagnant state of the current debate shows the need for bold new ideas and out‐​of‐​the‐​box thinking that will better prepare us for the next immigration reform debate.

Chapter 1: Automatic Adjustment of the H-1B Visas and Employment‐ Based Green Cards Caps

By Daniel Griswold

Congress should tie the growth of employment‐ based visas to growth in the most relevant sectors of the U.S. labor force to assure that the annual number of visas available more closely matches the demands of the U.S. economy over time. Two of the most important visas for foreign‐​born workers are the H-1B visa and the employment‐​based green card, both for more‐​skilled and more‐​educated foreign born workers. Yet the number of such visas available has not changed significantly in almost three decades despite transformational growth in the U.S. labor market.

CONTINUE READING ⟶

Chapter 2: Reducing Long Wait Times for Family‐​Sponsored and Employment‐​Based Immigrants

By Stuart Anderson

Congress should tie the growth of employment‐ based visas to growth in the most relevant sectors of the U.S. labor force to assure that the annual number of visas available more closely matches the demands of the U.S. economy over time. Two of the most important visas for foreign‐​born workers are the H-1B visa and the employment‐​based green card, both for more‐​skilled and more‐​educated foreign born workers. Yet the number of such visas available has not changed significantly in almost three decades despite transformational growth in the U.S. labor market.

CONTINUE READING ⟶

Chapter 3: Shared Border, Shared Future: A U.S.-Mexican Bilateral Worker Agreement

By Michael Clemens

The U.S. government has mismanaged labor mobility and failed to cooperate meaningfully with migrant countries of origin for the past half‐​century. Foreign workers have come for fundamental jobs, which are those that are critical to the U.S. economy and that do not require formal higher education, such as personal care, construction, warehousing, and others. They have come almost exclusively via family‐​based green cards, “low‐​skill” temporary guest worker visas for seasonal jobs tied to a single employer, or through a vast black market in labor. Many of the ills associated with migration arise from this regulatory system, not from migration itself. The United States needs a bilateral system of labor mobility for fundamental jobs that should begin

CONTINUE READING ⟶

Chapter 4: Constructing a U.S.- Canadian Bilateral Labor Agreement

By Michelangelo Landgrave

The U.S. government has mismanaged labor mobility and failed to cooperate meaningfully with migrant countries of origin for the past half‐​century. Foreign workers have come for fundamental jobs, which are those that are critical to the U.S. economy and that do not require formal higher education, such as personal care, construction, warehousing, and others. They have come almost exclusively via family‐​based green cards, “low‐​skill” temporary guest worker visas for seasonal jobs tied to a single employer, or through a vast black market in labor. Many of the ills associated with migration arise from this regulatory system, not from migration itself. The United States needs a bilateral system of labor mobility for fundamental jobs that should begin

CONTINUE READING ⟶

Chapter 5: State‐​Sponsored Visas

By David J. Bier

The federal government has maintained a near monopoly on the criteria for the admission of foreigners to the United States since the late 19th century. This centralization makes little sense in such an economically diverse country. Every state and locality have specific social and economic circumstances that the current centralized immigration system ignores. This centralization has ultimately polarized and paralyzed the national immigration debate and directly led to a threedecades‐ long delay of major reforms to a system that most agree desperately needs it. For this reason, Congress should allow state governments to sponsor migrants based on their own criteria under federal supervision.50

CONTINUE READING ⟶

Chapter 6: The Community Visa: A Local Solution to America’s Immigration Deadlock

By Jack Graham and Rebekah Smith

Immigration is one of the most significant drivers of prosperity, but its potential is suppressed by restrictionist politics, centralized bureaucracies, and out‐​of‐​date policies. Furthermore, its benefits are concentrated in a few regions. Communities with the greatest need for immigrants, especially in rural areas and the Rust Belt, are receiving few immigrants as the majority move to big coastal cities. Rural areas also tend to have the highest levels of anti‐​immigrant sentiment, in part because they do not benefit from migration the same way that people in big coastal cities do.77 The United States needs a new approach to help businesses of all sizes get the workers they need, to renew communities threatened by demographic decline, and to build local support for more liberalized immigration.

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Chapter 7: Building a Congressional Constituency for Immigration through “Earmarks”

By Grover Norquist

For many years, U.S. presidents have had significant discretion to make immigration policy, liberalizing or restricting rules on entry and setting deportation priorities. Congress has enacted little legislation of its own because it lacks the overwhelming national consensus required to pass reforms on the issue. But giving individual members of Congress more authority to select immigrants for permanent residence could overcome this stalemate.

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Chapter 8: Immigration Moneyball

By Justin Gest

President Trump wants to overhaul the U.S. immigration system so that it stops favoring visa applicants with U.S. family ties and instead gives priority to highly skilled applicants and those with job offers.94 His proposal is based on the assumption that immigrants’ educational credentials—what the administration calls “merit”—will lead to increased U.S. wages and immigrants who better integrate into U.S. culture.

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Chapter 9: Immigration Designed to Enhance American Lives (IDEAL)

By Steve Kuhn

The immigration reform proposals most likely to succeed are those that create benefits for Americans and immigrants and that garner bipartisan support. The Immigration Designed to Enhance American Lives (IDEAL) proposal strikes a balance between competing interests by allowing more legal immigrants to work in the United States by paying the federal government for the opportunity. That revenue could then be used to reduce the tax burden or otherwise benefit native‐​born Americans. This essay and planks are based on the IDEAL Immigration Policy.100

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Chapter 10: Don’t Restrict Immigration, Tax It

By Nathan Smith

Many economists—including Nobel laureate Gary Becker—favor taxing immigration because charging a “price” can produce a more efficient result than restricting it with government‐​established caps or quotas. Good immigration policy ought to bring the greatest good to the greatest number, subject to the constraints of being compatible with human rights and incentives and of making many people better off without making others worse off. Consistent with those principles is a proposed policy called “Don’t Restrict Immigration, Tax It.”

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Chapter 11: Choosing Immigrants through Prediction Markets

By Robin Hanson

On immigration, the big political camps are in a tug of war. One side favors more immigrants; the other side wants fewer immigrants. But when faced with such a struggle, policymakers who care more about influence than about feeling solidarity should consider tugging the rope sideways, where fewer might oppose their efforts. To tug the rope sideways on immigration, policymakers should take a policy position that is perpendicular to the axis of more versus fewer immigrants. One sideways‐​pull policy would be to reform immigration laws to use prediction markets to admit different immigrants, without increasing the total number.

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Chapter 12: Transferable Citizenship

By Robin Hanson

Governments have long worked hard to create strong feelings of solidarity between citizens. National leaders often appeal to a common history of mutual aid, sacrifice, and even ethnic and cultural ties to garner support for government actions. All of this has helped create a relatively sacred and exclusive aura regarding citizenship that, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, is “the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle‐​field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land.”112 According to long‐​standing human norms, such associations are not to be created lightly and are debased when they are mixed with material motives such as money or other expressions of self‐​interest.

CONTINUE READING ⟶

Source: 12 New Immigration Ideas for the 21st Century

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Immigration Policies Threaten American Competitiveness

2020/05/13 Leave a comment

Interesting Harvard Business School alumni survey regarding perceived undermining of US competitiveness by Trump administration policies:

It is no secret that immigration has reshaped American innovation. Immigrants are the backbone of America’s most innovative industries, provide a quarter of our patent applications, and are numerous among our science and engineering superstars.

Taken from World Intellectual Property Organization data (Miguelez and Fink, 2013), Figure 1 shows that America received more than half of migrating inventors from 2000-2010.

Figure 1: Migration of inventors, 2000-2010
Figure 1: Migration of inventors, 2000-2010

 

Immigrants can be found in times of success and times of crisis. Examples include:

  • Among the American companies leading the race toward a vaccine to end the COVID-19 pandemic is Moderna, a Cambridge company with an immigrant co-founder and an immigrant CEO.
  • Another firm already conducting vaccine trials is Inovio Pharmaceuticals of Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, led by cofounder J. Joseph Kim. Kim, who came to the United States from South Korea at age 11 without speaking English, was among the pharmaceutical leaders who briefed President Trump on vaccine development in March.

The flow of global talent responsible for bringing these innovators to American shores has been a substantial driver of business creation. As I discuss in my book The Gift of Global Talent, skilled immigration is the world’s most precious resource.

Talent flows to where it’s needed

But talent is movable, and the United States must cherish and protect its prized position at the center of the global talent flow. At a time of crisis when fear is used to shift blame onto outsiders, America is at risk of signaling to global innovators and entrepreneurs, and the promising students who will one day become them, that they cannot have a future here.

Talent flows to where it is most productively utilized and welcome, and while the destination of choice has long been the United States, other countries are increasingly challenging America’s dominance.

“TALENT IS MOVABLE, AND THE UNITED STATES MUST CHERISH AND PROTECT ITS PRIZED POSITION AT THE CENTER OF THE GLOBAL TALENT FLOW.”

By some metrics, their efforts are succeeding. Between 1990 and 2010, America’s share of college-educated migrants within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development nations fell from about 50 percent to 40 percent.

Our recent research captures business leaders’ rising anxiety about America’s complacency in competing for this talent and the negative impact on America’s competitiveness that could result. We surveyed(pdf) thousands of Harvard Business School alumni for their views on immigration.

Our alumni were overwhelmingly supportive of skilled immigration. Over 90 percent said that foreign skilled workers have a positive effect on the US economy, and 87 percent believe that the United States should allow more highly skilled immigrants to move here to work and live (see Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2: Net agreement for belief statements about immigration
Figure 2: Net agreement for belief statements about immigration

 

Figure 3: Alumni views of immigration system and politics
Figure 3: Alumni views of immigration system and politics

Alumni also confirmed the importance of foreign skilled workers to their companies’ ability to compete. Nearly one in four said that at least 15 percent of their companies’ US-based skilled workforce was foreign born. Alumni expressed that immigrants were critical for developing better products and services, increasing the quality of innovation, and reaching international customers.

Our alumni warned us, however, that this important competitive advantage is at risk. A majority believe the current political rhetoric around immigration is harming their organization’s ability to attract foreign skilled workers. Nearly 60 percent blamed the US immigration system for causing project delays. And over two-thirds reported that their companies’ operations would be harmed if denied access to foreign skilled workers.

Because immigration is often a political third rail, there are many reasons to be skeptical that the United States will soon find a broad solution. In fact, when it comes to skilled immigration, our research shows more support for minor changes to the current system than for more fundamental reforms. Over two-thirds of alumni supported increasing the number of new H-1B visas issued each year by at least 50 percent. For much of the past decade, H-1B visas have run out within a single week (see Figure 4). Despite even the COVID-19 pandemic, the government received 275,000 applications in March of this year for the 85,000 slots in fiscal year 2021.

Figure 4: Months to reach H-1B visa cap by fiscal year
Figure 4: Months to reach H-1B visa cap by fiscal year

Structural changes, such as adopting wage ranking for awarding H-1B visas in place of today’s lottery system, did not achieve much support among our alumni. The gap between alumni believing the existing immigration system is harming their businesses and alumni only supporting incremental change is surprising to us. It is unclear whether this reveals a lack of knowledge or actual uneasiness about the policies themselves.

American competitiveness at risk

Either way, the stakes get higher in times of crisis: the recent H-1B visa lottery would have given the same chances to a critical researcher being recruited by Moderna and Inovio (or J&J and GlaxoSmithKline) as it would have to a software code tester working at an outsourcing company.

“WHILE WE MAY TEMPORARILY CLOSE BORDERS AS WE FIGHT COVID-19, BUSINESS MUST ARTICULATE JUST HOW DISASTROUS CLOSING OUR BORDERS LONG-TERM WOULD BE.”

One striking finding was that our alumni were in broad agreement over increasing the allocation of employment-based immigrants within the overall US immigration pool. When asked what share of total immigration to the United States should be employment-based, alumni on average proposed to quadruple today’s 12 percent share. When we surveyed a representative sample of the general public on this same question, we found a similar result—they proposed to triple the share of employment-based immigrants. That result held across all political affiliations, with both Democrats and Republicans proposing to increase the employment-based allotment.

Implementing such a shift could be quite politically controversial depending upon technique, especially if policies shifted visas from family-based channels and diversity programs rather than creating new employment-based visas. But we believe there is a path forward. We can build momentum by getting started with simpler actions like wage ranking H-1B applicants and creating immigrant entrepreneur visas. These quick wins can be stepping-stones towards further reform by proving that we can change our system for the better, despite decades of intransigence.

Most importantly, business leaders should get involved and share the burden with policymakers and academics to educate voters and build support for these policies that ultimately benefit America’s business community.

While we may temporarily close borders as we fight COVID-19, business must articulate just how disastrous closing our borders long-term would be. Some of the recent political rhetoric to halt all immigration, even if later scaled back in practice, endangers the image of America as a welcoming beacon to the next generation of scientists and entrepreneurs. Other countries are creating innovative new programs to attract talent and threaten our competitive advantage, while our government issues executive orders and espouses rhetoric that undermine our promise to the world’s brightest.

Our position at the center of global talent flows is now at risk. Business has both the pressing need, and the capacity, to accept this responsibility. It should.

About the Author

William R. Kerr William Kerr is the D’Arbeloff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Source: Immigration Policies Threaten American Competitiveness

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Americans Giving Up Citizenship Faster Than Ever Before Reports Bambridge Accountants New York

2020/05/13 Leave a comment

Significant increase.

As for the Canadian angle, ApCPC leader Andrew Scheer has not yet renounced his American citizenship (Stephen Lautens on Twitter: “Still no sign of Still no sign of Andrew Scheer in the US’s Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen To Expatriate (lose United States citizenship) …twitter.com › stephenlautens › status).:

Americans are renouncing their citizenship at the highest levels on record, according to research by the Enrolled Agents and accountants Bambridge Accountants New York.

  • 2,909 Americans gave up their citizenship in the first 3 months of 2020
  • Showing a 1,104% increase on the prior 3 months to December 2019where only 261 cases were recorded
  • 2,072 Americans gave up their citizenship in 2019 in total
  • This is the highest quarter on record, the previous record was 2,365 cases for the fourth quarter of 2016
  • It seems that the pandemic has motivated U.S. expats to cut ties and avoid the onerous tax reporting

Americans must pay a $2,350 government fee to renounce their citizenship, and those based overseas must do so in person at the U.S. Embassy in their country.

There are an estimated 9 million U.S. expats. The trend has been that there has been a steep decline over the last few years for U.S. citizens expatriating – the first 3 months of 2020 is a huge increase in the number of Americans renouncing their citizenship.

Under the IRS rules (section 6039g), every three months the U.S. Government publishes the names of all Americans who give up their citizenship. The first 3 months for 2020 had 2,909 Americans renouncing their citizenship, far more than the total of the four quarters for 2019 (2,072 Americans renounced).

Alistair Bambridge, partner at Bambridge Accountants New York, explains: “There has been a huge turnaround of U.S. expats renouncing, where the figures have been in steep decline since 2017.”

“The surge in U.S. expats renouncing from our experience is that the current pandemic has allowed individuals to get their affairs in order and deal with an issue they may have been putting off for a while.”

“For U.S. citizens living abroad, they are still required to file U.S. tax returns, potentially pay U.S. tax and report all their foreign bank accounts, investments and pensions held outside the U.S. For many Americans this intrusion is too much and they make the serious step of renouncing their citizenship as they do not plan to return to live in the U.S.”

“There has been a silver lining for U.S. expats that they have been able to claim the Economic Impact Payment of $1,200, but for some this is too little, too late.”

Source: Americans Giving Up Citizenship Faster Than Ever Before Reports Bambridge Accountants New York

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USA: Minority-Owned Small Businesses Were Supposed To Get Priority. They May Not Have

2020/05/13 Leave a comment

Of note. Will be interesting to see eventual analysis of take-up by immigrants and visible minorities of the various COVID-19 support programs in Canada:

The first time Rosemary Ugboajah applied for a small-business relief loan, it didn’t go well. She needed the money for her small Minneapolis-based company, which has created ad campaigns for brands like the NCAA Final Four.

So she went to her credit union.

“They were hard to reach, but eventually I got through to someone and they emailed me back saying they can’t process the loan because they don’t process SBA loans,” she said. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

Lawmakers did set aside $30 billion for smaller lenders, in part with the aim of helping business owners of color — like Ugboajah.

But a new report from the Small Business Administration’s inspector general found that businesses owned by people of color may not have received loans as intended under the Paycheck Protection Program. There was no evidence, the report said, that the SBA told lenders to prioritize business owners in “underserved” markets, including business owners of color — something the CARES Act had specifically instructed the SBA to do.

The report also recommends that the agency start collecting demographic information. Without that information for past loans, it will be hard to know how well the program served business owners of color.

Some businesses owned by one person — such as some sole proprietorships, like Ugboajah’s Neka Creative — were only allowed to apply for funds one week after other businesses. That put them in the back of the line to get the money, which ran out quickly during the first round.

After trying and failing at two other banks, Ugboajah managed to find one that was accepting applications from new customers, and she quickly applied. But that also went poorly.

“The next week, I got an email from them saying, you know, the money’s running out. And they’re now just going to prioritize their clients that have borrowed before,” she said with a weary laugh.

Ugboajah has applied there again during this second round of funding but hasn’t heard back yet.

But she could use the money, and fast — her team is currently working through the pandemic without pay.

“We had a healthy pipeline coming into this year. And as soon as this came down, everything went on hold and then disappeared,” she said.

An additional problem for these owners is that their businesses are more likely to be sole proprietorships, according to Ashley Harrington, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending.

“When we’re talking about businesses of color, most of them are very small businesses. So they’re sole proprietorships or they have less than 10 employees or in fact more likely to be a sole proprietorship than any of the other small businesses,” Harrington said.

Ugboajah has six people on her team — and they’re all contractors — making her business one of those one-person sole proprietorships. African American-owned businesses are particularly likely to be one-person firms.

And relationships with banks matter, according to Michael Roth, managing partner at Next Street, which works with local governments on small-business policy.

“Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses, because of their lack of access to capital from banks and financial institutions and friends and family, are far more likely to use personal funds to finance their businesses,” he said. “And generally, that’s run out of personal checking accounts.”

That could be a problem for some businesses in the program, because some banks would loan only to people with business accounts. So owners without those — who were, for example, running their businesses out of their personal accounts — were shut out.

Ugboajah says that if she doesn’t get the funding, it won’t take her business down completely, but it could make life harder.

“The main thing that we’re on the verge of losing is our office space. But, yeah, we won’t go out of business,” she said.

But it has already hurt the contractors who rely on her for income, she added: “One of my team members has taken a job with Amazon, for example. But we’re still pushing to get business in.”

For now, she says, they’re working on a new project: to make sure health information about the coronavirus can reach poor and immigrant communities, as well as communities of color.

Source: Minority-Owned Small Businesses Were Supposed To Get Priority. They May Not Have

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Leveraging international education for a globally connected and prosperous Canada

2020/05/13 Leave a comment

The education industry view. Will need a major rethink of their business model’s dependence on international students. Their business case would benefit from more rigorous evaluations of the longer-term contributions, not just the more short-term contributions while at college or university:

Canadians understand the importance of welcoming individuals from all around the world to our country. Canada is a desirable destination for trade, travel, study and immigration. We know that our prosperity and international competitiveness rely on being open to people and opportunity from every corner of the world.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis without modern equivalent. The actions Canada takes post-emergency can set the foundation for a sustainable growth and recovery with global opportunity in mind.

We believe that Canada’s colleges and universities– and the network of business and community leaders who came to Canada as international students– can play an essential role in responding to this crisis, and in helping Canada recover and thrive in a post-COVID-19 world.

Universities and colleges are already key drivers of Canada’s international agenda. In 2019 alone, international students contributed over $21.6 billion to the Canadian economy, more than the value of automotive parts, lumber, or aircraft exports. These contributions are made in communities all across the country, and support employment and innovation in every province and territory.

The more than 600,000 international students at the postsecondary level also bring new perspectives, ideas, and valuable networks abroad. International students become highly trained individuals who contribute to their local Canadian economies, and then either immigrate to Canada and join our labour market or return home with an appreciation for what Canada has to offer as a business partner.

Canada’s response to the economic impact of the crisis to date has been commendable. Still, we need to ensure international students feel welcome and supported so that Canadian PSE remains competitive in these uncertain times and we can continue to be leaders in a global marketplace.

Canada needs:

Responsive and informed study permit processing — Ease of obtaining a study permit is a key factor in international student decision making. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has already shown a lot of flexibility in responding to the pandemic. To remain competitive, we need IRCC to be nimble and to allow, on an exceptional basis, international students to start programs online this fall without jeopardizing their eligibility for a post-graduate work permit.

Strengthening IRCC’s capacity to facilitate business resumption — Once health and travel restrictions start to be lifted in Canada and around the world, we must ensure that there is capacity to address large volumes of new study permit applications, quickly. Measures must be put in place now to ensure that disruptions to processing for the fall intake will be minimized.

Two-way mobility and international cooperation — As part of comprehensive federal government support to the Canadian postsecondary education sector, it is also imperative to maintain our commitment to a national outbound mobility program for Canadian postsecondary students to support Canada’s goals around trade diversification, skills development and the future of work.

We’ve seen colleges and universities across Canada stepping up and supporting their communities in this time of need, donating medical equipment and retooling processes to manufacture more. We’ve seen our students, recent graduates, in medical fields rushing to be of service in support of our health care systems. With the right investments, universities and colleges can also continue to play a critical role in building skills and increasing global competitiveness, helping Canada thrive in a post-COVID-19 world. Education opens doors, for students and for Canadian companies — across all sectors — looking to do business internationally. Leveraging international education, and the people-to-people ties it generates is a sound investment towards a more globally connected and prosperous Canada.

Source: Leveraging international education for a globally connected and prosperous Canada

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Feds hint at scaling back immigration due to pandemic fallout

2020/05/13 Leave a comment

Preliminary signals but we will only know when. the immigration plan is released in the fall:

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting unemployment could lead to immigration to Canada being cut for the first time in a decade.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino hinted as much in testimony to the Commons human resources committee, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

Mendicino said cabinet will be “taking a look at our levels and what is our operational capacity.”

The review “is of course going to be driven by the context,” he said. “As we all know, we are in the midst of a pandemic,” he said.

In an Immigration Levels Plan tabled in the Commons on March 12, cabinet proposed raising immigration by about 1% of the population a year, from 331,000 immigrants in 2019 to 341,000 in 2020 and 351,000 in 2021.

But since then, Canada’s unemployment rate has risen to 13%.

“Given Canada’s massive unemployment for the foreseeable future, what is the government’s scale-back planning for economic migrants and refugees for the next two years?” asked Conservative MP Peter Kent.

“Given that the economic crisis will linger after the health crisis has passed, can Canada accommodate an additional 1% of immigrants and refugees added to our population in the foreseeable future?”

Mendicino said the feds will continue to look “at the circumstances including the surrounding context of Canada’s response to COVID-19 as we plan for the future,” and will provide an update in the fall.

Source: Feds hint at scaling back immigration due to pandemic fallout

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Tung Chan: Recent increase in hate crimes toward Asian-Canadians is a shock and a shame

2020/05/12 Leave a comment

One of the better opinion pieces on anti-Asian-Canadian hate crimes:

Canada is a multicultural society. The majority of us are welcoming and accepting of new Canadians, no matter where they are from or what race they are. This positive attribute of Canadian society is universally appreciated by new arrivals and admired by people around the world. This is why the recent increase in hate crimes toward Asian-Canadians is a shock to all of us.

Some of my Chinese-Canadian friends are taking extra precautions when they are out in public, looking over their shoulders when they are walking alone on empty streets. Many Chinese-Canadian organizations are banding together to fight the rise in racism.

It is no wonder then that a national survey conducted for the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice found that as many as one in five respondents do not think it is safe to sit on the bus next to an Asian or Chinese person who isn’t wearing a face mask.

The same poll, conducted in the week of April 24 with a sample size of 1,130 adults randomly drawn from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, also found that nearly 13 per cent, or one in eight respondents, were aware of incidents of racial bias in their neighbourhoods since COVID-19.

One member of Parliament, Derek Sloan, took advantage of this latent hostility and questioned the loyalty of our chief medical officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, who, like me, is an immigrant from Hong Kong. To the political base where his dogwhistle was directed, a Chinese person is a Chinese person — chief medical officer or not, naturalized Canadian or not.

A television outlet went further with a story that painted a picture of the Chinese diaspora, including Canadian citizens, obeying orders from the People’s Republic of China and secretly buying up personal protection equipment and shipping it back to China.

The unfortunate perception left with viewers is that Chinese-Canadians cannot be trusted because they may be members of a fifth column, ready and willing to follow the People’s Republic of China’s orders against the interest of Canada.

The point is that the actions of a few should never be generalized to a group. Yes, there is an increase of assaults on Asian-Canadians, but the actions of those few should not generate fear of all.

Yes, some Asian-Canadians sent care packages to China to protect loved ones prior to COVID-19 reaching Canada. But it was also done in hopes of preventing the virus from spreading and reaching Canada.

Everyone is afraid of COVID-19, of losing family, of being without an income, of what tomorrow will bring. But we know the fabric of Canada is sewn with kindness and compassion.

Our civic leaders and elected politicians need to continue speaking up to condemn those who physically attack to cause bodily harm or those who verbally attack to create doubt about the loyalty of Chinese-Canadians. The perpetrators of these malicious acts must be made to understand that their actions and their words are not acceptable in our society.

For the sake of our country, let’s focus our energy on fighting the virus, not each other.

Source: Tung Chan: Recent increase in hate crimes toward Asian-Canadians is a shock and a shame

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Dual Canadian-U.S. citizens qualify for Trump’s COVID-19 emergency payments

2020/05/12 Leave a comment

And vice-versa (provided Canadians resident in Canada) but interesting analysis on how they could benefit more than American “mono-nationals”:

Millions of dollars in U.S. pandemic stimulus payments could find their way into Canada in the coming weeks and months.

Canadians with U.S. citizenship, who may not have paid taxes in the U.S. for decades, still qualify for the Trump administration’s one-time pandemic support payment.

In order to get the payment, Canadians with dual U.S. citizenship and U.S. citizens living and working in Canada must have filed a tax return with the Internal Revenue Service for 2018 or 2019 reporting their global income.

In some cases, people who qualify for the payment can also get the full U.S. COVID-19 benefit payment while earning substantially more per year than they would if they lived in the United States because of special tax exemptions only available to American ex-pats.

Democrats Abroad, a Canadian-based group that helps Americans vote, file taxes and stay informed while living abroad, held a seminar last month explaining how its members could apply for the payment.

“Most of them are surprised, really surprised about it, because … there are people who’ve been here 40 years and they’ve never gotten a cent from the U.S. government, except some who get U.S. social security cheques, and they aren’t many — and now all of a sudden they are getting $1,600,” said Ed Ungar, co-vice chair of Democrats Abroad.

“They are really happy to get it, but it wasn’t something they counted on.”

Ungar said he does not know of anyone who has received the payment but said most of the people he’s spoken to are convinced the payment will arrive within six months.

In the U.S., many Americans who have their banking details on file with the IRS already have received their payments. Many of those who don’t are still waiting for their cheques.

The problem for many dual citizens in Canada is that while many have been filing their taxes with the IRS for years, there is no bank account attached to their filings because they have not had to pay penalties or receive payments.

Without a U.S.-based bank account, Canadians with dual citizenship and Americans living and working here don’t have a way to receive an electronic payment. They have to wait for cheques to be sent out to the addresses on their last income tax filings.

Filing worldwide income to the IRS

U.S. citizens living abroad who wish to retain their American citizenship are required to file a U.S. tax return every year detailing their worldwide income.

If it’s determined that the U.S. citizen paid lower taxes abroad than they would have if they had earned the same income in the U.S., they are required to pay the difference to the IRS.

The IRS’s economic impact payment, EIP, is similar to the Canada emergency response benefit, CERB — a cash payment offered to citizens across the country who are struggling financially because of the pandemic.

Canadians who qualify for the CERB can claim it for a maximum of four four-week periods. The EIP is a one-time payment.

To qualify for the full EIP of $1,200 US, ($1,687 Cdn), plus an additional $500 US ($702) for each qualifying child, U.S. citizens can earn a maximum of $75,000 US ($105,400) as an individual, or $112,500 US ($158,100) if they are the head of a single-income family.

Married couples with joint earnings of no more than $150,000 US ($210,800) qualify for a joint benefit of $2,400 UD ($3,374).

A major difference between the Canadian and American pandemic benefits is that in Canada, people must apply to receive it, but in the U.S. the payment is automatically dispersed, providing the person filed a tax return in 2018 or 2019.

The U.S. EIP maximum payment is gradually reduced after people reach their maximum amount of earned income until the benefit is cut off at $99,000 US ($139,200) for individuals, at $136,500 US ($192,000) for single-income families and $198,000 US ($278,300) for families with two incomes.

Earning more in Canada

The major difference when it comes to U.S. citizens living abroad is that they are allowed to exempt up to $103,900 US ($146,000) of income from their 2018 tax filing, or $105,900 US ($149,000) of income from their 2019 return.

“Somebody living outside the U.S. would actually … earn more income than somebody living in the U.S. and be eligible to receive that benefit because of this Foreign Earned Income Exclusion,” said Kevin Kirkpatrick, a U.S. tax lawyer with the international firm Moody’s.

In some cases, the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion can effectively lower a person’s income to the level where they can still receive the benefit.

For example, in 2018 an individual U.S. citizen living in Canada could have earned $250,000 Cdn while still qualifying for the full EIP — but if they lived in the U.S. they could have earned a maximum of about $105,000 while getting the same benefit.

CBC has requested information from the IRS and the U.S. embassy in Ottawa on how many U.S. citizens live in Canada and file U.S. tax returns, but neither agency was able to provide that information.

Several follow up questions to both the embassy and the IRS were not returned by the time of publication.

According to the 2016 census, 377,410 people in Canada identified themselves as being either fully or partly of American origin.

Source: Dual Canadian-U.S. citizens qualify for Trump’s COVID-19 emergency payments

Filed under Multiculturalism

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