Wells: Let’s reopen Ontario and Quebec. You go first.

2020/04/29 Leave a comment

I am always impressed by the sophisticated understanding of Paul Wells when it comes to how governmental decision-making and his avoidance of overly simplistic arguments of many commentators (he calls out some). Just as he did in The doomed 30-year battle to stop a pandemic, a welcome dose of reality and constraints, where governments have accountability unlike those writing opinion columns:

At last the day came when the politely populist premiers of Ontario and Quebec—the provinces where four-fifths of Canada’s COVID-19 patients reside—announced their plans to roll away their stone and step into the post-pandemic light.

The plans were nearly empty and the premiers looked terrified.

The Ontario document, A Framework for Reopening Our Province, has timelines that mention no date after April 27, which was the day the document was released. It listed three phases: “Protect and Support,” which is what’s been happening; “Restart,” which theoretically comes next; and “Recover,” which in theory will happen someday. The “Restart” phase is described in conspicuously belts-and-suspenders terminology: a “careful, stage-by-stage approach” during which “public health and workplace safety will remain the top priority” and “public health officials will carefully monitor” whether there are new outbreaks “for two-to-four weeks.” The big question: “whether it is necessary to change course” and essentially revert to the current cave days.

This next phase will kick in when cases are durably declining, hospitals can handle any influx of new cases, and public-health tracing can follow any new cases. The second of those boxes, mercifully, has probably already been ticked. The third may never be, because this is such a sneaky virus. Where is Ontario on the first? A reporter asked. Premier Doug Ford couldn’t say.

Quebec, the epicenter of the Canadian outbreak, has a slightly more concrete plan about which Quebec officials seemed commensurately less confident. “If we see that the situation isn’t under control, we’ll push the timetable back,” premier François Legault said. “The watchword will be prudence.”

Another watchword will also be regionalism. Montreal is in the very early stages of a decline in active caseload following what was, and in many ways remains, one of the worst outbreaks in North America. The rest of the province looks more like the rest of the country. So Legault is re-opening elementary schools and public daycares outside greater Montreal in two weeks, on May 11. In the Montreal region they’ll open a week later. High schools stay closed until September.

And even that timetable exaggerates the imminence of a post-COVID social era. Schools will reopen “if and only if” the situation doesn’t deteriorate from now to May 11, Legault said. And school won’t even be mandatory: “Parents who want to keep their children at home won’t be penalized in any way.”

It’s pretty easy to anticipate 72 hours of large-scale game theory beginning on May 9, as tens of thousands of parents use Facebook, Zoom and text messages to ascertain whether they’re better off sending the kids to school or keeping them home. Class sizes will, in any event, be capped at 15, essentially requiring some number of parents to keep their children out.

And after that? When does your local barber shop, dry cleaner, skate sharpener or driver’s license office open? We’ll see. It’s a far cry from the easy certainty of commentators like the  shock jocks on Quebec City radio and the more nuanced impatience of columnists in the Sun papers, which essentially delivered their readership whole to the Ford Conservatives.

It’s an impatience all of us have heard in family conversations. It’s an impatience most of us feel. You know the songbook as well as I do: Look, this is ridiculous, nobody signed on for global economic euthanasia, nobody was told in March that we’d still be here in May and maybe July and maybe January, everybody has to die of something, suicide and obesity and delayed surgery kill people too, and we’re pushing those numbers up as we try to tamp this one down. (Suddenly everyone’s a public-health ninja who knows more about all this than Theresa Tam and Bonnie Henry.)

But it’s quite another matter to be the person in charge when the rubber hits the road. People are full of bravado for society and sometimes less so for their circle. Two weeks seems a reasonably manageable timeframe for a partial resumption of what was, after all, everyone’s everyday life until mid-March. But push it forward and make it personal: How do you feel about sending your own son or daughter back to school tomorrow? Are you ready for a family dinner this weekend? Everyone’s got to die of something, so how about Uncle Ned in late May by drowning in his own pulmonary fluids? That’s a harder call. It helps explain why the plans Legault and Ford released on Monday were, in Ford’s words, road maps and not timetables. And why it left some columnists, whose responsibility extends no further than their keyboards—I know, I live there too—righteously cranky.

The fact is, it’s hard to plan next steps because disaster continues despite the best efforts to contain it: 57 deaths in Ontario in one day, 84 in Quebec. Many more still to come. The closest parallel to this coronavirus in recent history was the 1918-19 flu outbreak, and that one was worse in the fall than it had been in the spring.

Legault and Ford aren’t even leading the process of deciding what happens next: like good populists, they’re being led by it, and if they looked worried on Monday it’s because they’re well aware there’s a shift change underway in the reopening debate. The debate was led until now by people who gain by sounding bold. They’re finding themselves outnumbered by people with everything to lose. Suddenly waiting doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.

Source: Let’s reopen Ontario and Quebec. You go first.

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Australia’s coronavirus re-boot needs to consider population as well as the economy

2020/04/29 Leave a comment

Similar to some of the commentary in Canadian media, although Australia has had more restrictive immigration for a number of years:

We all know our coronavirus isolation has had a marked effect on our ability to produce GDP income and tax revenue, both so necessary for the proper running of our economy.

But it is also at times like this that we tend to forget that our greatest resource is not our significant mineral wealth or our world-class agricultural produce. It is our people.

And we are a migrant nation, built on the sweat and tears of many successful people, who, on the whole, maintain our exceptional standard of living with their hard work, good education and the burning aspiration of always wanting to do better.

But we are also an ageing country, with our largest demographic now approaching retirement and fewer people in the 20-60 demographic — the age group that produces the clear majority of tax revenue.

Population is on the decline

Last week Acting Minister for Immigration, Alan Tudge, confirmed what we knew to be true since the virus took hold — coronavirus is driving the biggest population decline in Australian history.

Since the beginning of the year, we have lost almost two years of population growth in just three months.

More than 300,000 tourists, students and itinerant workers have fled our shores in an exodus that is certain to deepen our consumer spending slump and put those industries who heavily rely on a migrant workforce.

Some are also predicting that a further 300,000 are set to leave before the end of the year — another blow to our GDP.

This severely impacts our country’s productive tax-generating capacity.

In times of crisis when public spending is at fever pitch, we need to be thinking about how we are going to foot the bill, to help expediate our recovery and get the economy working hard for us again.

How do we turn it around?

This is not a uniquely Australian problem, but a problem we share with many other developed economies including Japan, Britain and Germany.

So, what might be the remedies?

We could simply have more children.

In Australia, we are only averaging 1.7 children per couple, so we are not even replacing mum and dad. This is unlikely to change in the short to medium term.

We can also increase taxation on a smaller and smaller number of people, which is probably electorally unpalatable, not to mention the real possibility of reducing GDP and tax revenue as a result.

Or we can go into austerity and cut spending, also a hugely problematic solution socially and, quite possibly, financially.

Alternatively we can simply import more people in the productive cohort.

A young migrant who goes to school here for four years, then does the HSC, studies at our universities, gets a part time job, starts paying tax, then goes on to full employment some and stays in the tax base for over 40 years, is an ideal candidate.

At a time like this when our economic prosperity is so deeply threated by disease and debt, it might not be altogether intuitive, but it is indeed our best remedy to increase our intake of foreign students, agricultural, nursing and hospitality workers.

Migrants can help us rebuild

Each of these categories are vital to fill for our recovery and continued economic success.

We need the foreign students to rescue our top universities and as for the hundreds of jobs in hospitality, agriculture and nursing, well of course they should be available to our residents first.

But if 30 years of experience is anything to go by, these are not jobs that we have ever been able to fill locally.

And with the new infrastructure boom that will hopefully ensue following COVID-19, we will also need new migrant skills to assist our small but resourceful workforce in creating new economic growth, so vital in re-igniting our economy.

Australia, prior to COVID-19, had 29 years of continuous economic growth.

Perhaps with a bit of vision and new skill base, powered by local and migrant minds and hands, we can make it 30 years.

Source: Australia’s coronavirus re-boot needs to consider population as well as the economy

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Australia: Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge addresses concerns of Indian nationals on temporary visas in Australia

2020/04/29 Leave a comment

Presumably, some Indians on Canadian visitor visas have also been caught by Indian airports being shut down but haven’t seen any media coverage:

The coronavirus pandemic has spawned uncertainty in the best of cases, but more so for the 2.2 million temporary visa holders in the country, who have been thrown into chaos by global travel bans and border closures.

A large number of these visa holders are from India, many of whom are now finding themselves in a precarious situation, where Australia is asking them to go home, but their own country isn’t yet ready to evacuate them.

Addressing their concerns, in an exclusive interview with SBS Punjabi, Immigration Minister Alan Tudge said he understands its a matter of “greater uncertainty” for those Indian nationals who are anxious to return home.

 

“We understand that the international airports in India are closed until next week and then and a further decision will be made by Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi whether to extend them again or reopen them,” said Mr Tudge.

He added that the situation in India is, however, different from that in Australia.

In Australia, we are not allowing foreign nationals to come into the country, we are only allowing Australians and permanent residents, unless there are exceptional circumstances, whereas India is not even allowing Indian nationals to return to their country

‘Temporary visa holders facing hardships must return home’

For most temporary visa holders, the problem is not just limited to being unable to return to their countries of origin, it is also a financial one. Many of them have lost their jobs due to the pandemic and are now having to survive the crisis without any income assistance from the federal government.

Addressing the concerns of visa holders, Minister Tudge said while the country recognises their importance to its economy and society, however, with Australian citizens and residents being the priority, many will have to reevaluate their options.

“Firstly, all the efforts with the welfare payments and the JobKeeper payments are very much focused on Australians and permanent residents here. If you’re here on a temporary visa and you do run out of money then we do encourage people to return home where you may be able to get support,” he said.

It is difficult for Indian nationals at the moment because the international airports are closed, but our expectations and maybe the expectations of Prime Minister Modi is that they will be opened again in the not so distant future

‘Immigration will resume when it will be safe to do so’

Mr Tudge said the government is yet to take a decision on when it would open its borders to anyone other than the Australian citizens and permanent residents.

“Two things have to occur for that to happen. First is the international airports in India have to open up which is a decision of the Indian government and then second, we would have to open our borders to foreign nationals and we haven’t made that decision yet,” he said.

The minister thanked the Indian immigrants for their “terrific” contribution to Australia’s immigration success.

“I think it will be some time yet before we reopen the borders but it’s is something that we’d like to do in the future because immigration has been such a critical part of Australia’s success.

“And particularly immigrants from India in the last decades who have come in very large numbers and made a terrific contribution in Australia and we will be looking for immigration to resume when it is safe to do so,” he said.

Minister Tudge said a lot of Australia’s success in stemming the coronavirus has come through government’s move to close the international borders. He said a decision to reopen would largely depend on the development of a vaccine.

“How quickly we will rebound, it’s just too early to say and if there’s a vaccine which is found and that’s globally available then we may be able to open-up those borders sooner rather than later and get back to what the normal situation is. But if the vaccine is not found for some time, then it will probably be a slower process,” said the minister.

‘Immigration rate will be low’

Mr Tudge said it is too early to ascertain the long term impact of the health crisis on the country’s immigration policies, but added that the numbers would certainly be low as compared to the previous years.

“It’s just too early to say at this stage obviously our immigration rate will be lower this year compared to previous years because we have closed down the borders and almost nobody is coming in at the moment,” he said.

COVID-19 impact on visa applications:

The minister said while the processing of onshore applications has not been largely affected, those lodging visa applications from outside the country are more likely to feel the pinch.

“If you’re overseas and you’re applying for a visa, then I can say that it is being interrupted because of coronavirus, often because things like the English language testing providers or the health testing providers in most destination countries are shut down.”

He, however, added that the situation would be “irrelevant” for applicants from India as they would not be able to enter the country, even if they had a valid visa until the restrictions are lifted.

“At the moment that situation is almost irrelevant, because even if you had a valid visa and if you were in somewhere like India or Nepal then you would not be able to come into the country in any case.

“Again, we are keeping a close eye on things we are continuing to process those in Australia we are processing some overseas, but it obviously is at a slower rate,” said the minister.

Source: Exclusive: Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge addresses concerns of Indian nationals on temporary visas in Australia

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We are all niqabis now: Coronavirus masks reveal hypocrisy of face covering bans

2020/04/29 Leave a comment

Overly cute comparison, as the reason for wearing the mask, and gender-specific requirements and impacts are not insignificant:

Grey’s Anatomy, the longest running prime-time medical drama on U.S. television, contains many scenes of doctors and nurses in full gear (hospital scrubs, surgical caps, face masks) around the operating table. As they talk, laugh and argue, close-ups of the actors’ eyes convey concentration and emotion.

These scenes contradict one of the common arguments against face coverings — or more accurately, niqabs worn by some Muslim women — that they are a barrier to communication.

Now that face masks are being used to help fight against the spread of COVID-19, it has caused some to look anew at general discrimination against Muslim women wearing niqabs. And it has got me wondering about Québec’s face-covering ban, which came into law in October 2017 as well as France’s ban which came into law in 2011.

If Canadians, Americans and Europeans can get used to the new ubiquitous face masks, will they also get used to niqabs? Will discrimination against the few women in the West who wear itstop?

History of face politics

The European disapproval of the face veil has a long history, as I learned while researching for my book on Canadian Muslim women and the veil.

Niqab has been seen as both a symbol of cultural threat and also of the silencing of Muslim women. In her book, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman, Moja Kahf traces one of the first discussions of the veil in western fiction to the novel Don Quixote. One of the novel’s characters, Dorotea, asks about a veiled woman who walks into an inn: “Is this lady a Christian or a Moor?” The answer came: “Her dress and her silence make us think she is what we hope she is not.” As this scene from Don Quixote indicates, European women sometimes also covered their faces or hair but when they did so, it was not associated with something negative.

Eventually, the rise of western liberalism, with its prioritization of the individual, capitalism and consumerism led to a new “face politics.” Jenny Edkins, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, studied the rise of a politics centred around this new meaning of the “face,” including the idea that the face “if it can be ‘read’ correctly, may be seen to display the essential nature of the person within.”

The flip side of this new face politics became true as well: concealing the face became something suspicious, as if the person had something they wanted to hide, and prevent others from knowing the real them.

At the same time, we grow up learning our face is something to be manipulated, in the same way actors manipulate their faces to entertain viewers. We learn about “putting on one’s face” with makeup; “facing the world” through our education and personal grit; cultivating “poker face” to deceive people in cards or lying to parents and teachers. We learn how to compose our face so as not to show emotion in the wrong places, like crying at work.

The face is often a mask of our real selves.

Anti-niqab attitudes and hate crimes

Generally, hate crimes are on the rise in Canada with the highest increases in Ontario and Québec. In Ontario, the increase was tied to hate crimes against Muslims, Black and Jewish populations. In Québec, the increase was the result of crimes against Muslims. According to a recent peer-reviewed study by Sidrah Ahmad, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, a tally of hate crimes in Canada released by Statistics Canada in 2015 noted that Muslim populations had the highest percentage of hate crime victims who were female.

The rise in hate crimes mirrors the opinion of many public leaders who have loudly proclaimed their anti-niqab attitudes. Jason Kenney, the former Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, tried — and failed — to ban niqab in citizenship ceremonies. In 2015 he called the niqab “a tribal cultural practice where women are treated like property and not like human beings.” In the same year, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper called it a dress “rooted in a culture that is anti-women … [and] offensive that someone would hide their identity.”

A 2018 Angus Reid poll found that the majority of Canadians support a ban of niqabs on public employees. These contemporary attempts to unveil Muslim women echo British and French attempts to the same in both colonial and current times.

Medical face veils

In a recent op-ed for the Toronto Star, University of Windsor law student Tasha Stansbury pointed out that in Montréal hospitals, people are being asked to wear surgical masks. They walk in and interact with medical staff without being asked to remove their mask for identity or security purposes.

But a woman wearing a niqab walking into the same hospital would be forced by law to remove it.

A decade ago, U.S. philosophy professor Martha Nussbaumbrilliantly exposed the hypocrisy of face veil bans, in an opinion piece for the New York Times. If it is security, she asked, why can we walk into a public building bundled up against the cold with our faces covered in scarves? Why are woolly scarves not seen to hamper reciprocity and good communication between citizens in liberal democracies? She wrote:

“Moreover, many beloved, trusted professionals cover their faces all year round: surgeons, dentists, (American) football players, skiers and skaters … what inspires fear and mistrust in Europe … is not covering per se, but Muslim covering.”

Is a face mask used to help block coronavirus really that different from a niqab?

Both are garments worn for a specific purpose, in a specific place and for a specific time only. It is not worn 24/7. Once the purpose is over, the mask and niqab come off.

The calling of the sacred motivates some to wear the niqab. A highly infectious disease propels many to wear face masks.

If we all start wearing masks does it mean we have succumbed to a form of oppression? Are we submissive? Does it mean we cannot communicate with each other? If we are in Québec, will we be denied employment at a daycare? Refused a government service? Not allowed on the bus?

Source: We are all niqabis now: Coronavirus masks reveal hypocrisy of face covering bans

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ICYMI: In the UK, white immigration is an asset – while everyone else is undesirable

2020/04/29 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary on immigration narratives and some of the contradictions with respect to white versus visible minority immigrants and their descendants:

A conversation that has stayed with me came after the Brexitvote in 2016, when a French friend, who is white, told me of her anxiety at the outcome. There were already signs of the mounting xenophobia against foreigners of all descriptions that was to come in the aftermath of the referendum. “It’s like people are seeing us as immigrants!” she said with disgust. “As if we don’t belong here.”

My immediate thought was, “welcome”. I’m not an immigrant but I have always been seen as one. The response to any perceived transgression I make towards a public person or policy is frequently: “If you don’t like it here, then leave.” White immigrants, and especially those from western Europe, had on the whole never before felt as if this prejudice applied to them, because “immigration” – as a contentious political issue – has never been about people coming from other countries, and it’s never been about the movement required to get here. “Immigration” has always been a byword for the problem of people who are racialised as undesirable, whether they were born here or not.

The hypocrisy is embedded in the history. I often wonder how it was that the arrival of the SS Windrushin 1948, carrying fewer than 500 West Indians specifically invited to come and work in the UK, was and remains such a symbol of profound soul searching for the national identity. That event stands in stark contrast to the more than 200,000 eastern Europeans and 100,000 Irish immigrants who came to Britain during the same period. The former is regarded as a turning point in the fabric of the nation’s identity, the latter is barely remembered at all.

But this illogicality in our narratives around immigration is not confined to the past. I have spent most of my life living in leafy southwest London, an area often described as “quintessentially English”, helped by the presence of rowing on the Thames at Putney and Hammersmith, lawn tennis at Wimbledon, botanical gardens at Kew and Henry VIII’s old hunting grounds in the deer-populated Richmond Park. These areas are still perceived as unchanged by mass immigration.

Dig a little deeper, however, and it emerges that locals call this area the “biltong belt” because of the large presence of white South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders. In fact, white immigration has had the same impact as immigration everywhere – provided skilled and unskilled labour to meet economic demand, triggering the arrival of a new wave of biltong-themed shops, and requiring planning to provide the requisite housing; school places; doctors surgery capacity. The difference is that this immigration is never weaponised as a threat to the national heritage, or as a reason for pre-existing communities to flee. This immigration has been largely unproblematic because it is white, English-speaking and less visibly “other”.

The notion of “other” is in itself deeply ironic. The history of immigration law is a history of government attempts to limit the movement of people who had not long before been British subjects as imperial citizens. As Rab Butler, former home secretary, said about the Commonwealth Immigration Act in 1962, these were laws whose “restrictive effect is intended to, and would in fact, operate on coloured people almost exclusively”.

Today’s governments are more subtle in their language. The word “coloured” disappeared from the letter of our legislation but retains its power in effect. Immigration lawyers frequently remark, after visits to immigration detention centres, how few white immigrants can be found there – these are warehousing facilities for the still undesirable African, Asian, South American and other non-white people. In my work, I have interviewed many who were arrested in dawn raids while in the process of lawfully regularising their immigration status.

The most blatant examples of contemporary racism – the Windrush scandal for example – have exposed a historical continuity that infects the entire immigration system. The “root cause” of the scandal, Wendy Williams, inspector of constabulary, found, can be traced back to the “racial motivations” of immigration laws at their most racialised birth.

The sooner we acknowledge that legacy, and dispense with the fantasy that immigration has nothing to do with race, the sooner we will be able to consign this ongoing, abhorrent injustice to the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

Source: In the UK, white immigration is an asset – while everyone else is undesirable

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

To increase diversity at the top, show them what it looks like to be there

2020/04/28 Leave a comment

Sounds like a good program:

Twenty-year-old student Mohammed Ali felt an immediate connection with Jennifer Jackson, president Capital One Canada, when he shadowed her recently as part of the CEOx1Day program – and not just because of their shared passion for sports.

“I sensed that Ms. Jackson, as a black person like myself, as well as being a female [business leader] in Canada, has probably gone through some adversity,” says Mr. Ali. “Our upbringing was very similar. Ms. Jackson shared how she also went to a high school outside her area to get a better education, so we immediately had that talking point. She seemed like someone I’d known for a long time.”

Encouraging diverse representation at the top is just one of aims of the CEOx1Day program, which was created by executive search firm Odgers Berndtson in 2013 to give students the opportunity to learn business and leadership skills from top executives.

Programs like these may be especially helpful for participants like Mr. Ali, who was raised in a low-income area of Toronto by his Somalian immigrant parents. He is a third-year bachelor of business administration student at York University’s Schulich School of Business. He’s also a mentor himself to students at Toronto-based Schulich and in his community.

“I started to become a mentor for students who are in my position trying to move up because I know it’s a lonely journey,” he says. “I wish I could have had someone push for me, so I want to be that person for other students.”

Research shows that mentors are instrumental for the academic success and career development of diverse talent. According to a 2019 U.S. study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, taking a more intentional, inclusive and evidence-based approach to mentoring students could help engage and retain a broader group of students. The report also found that effective mentoring relationships had an overall positive effect on academic achievement and degree attainment, as well as on career success and satisfaction.

Ms. Jackson chose to participate in CEOx1Day because she believes that the power of mentors in this type of program is to give a window that a student might not otherwise have into how she and her organization operates. Then they can build on their strengths by taking what they learn with them.

“My ability to have an imprint on the rising next generation was really appealing,” says Ms. Jackson. “I did answer a lot of questions and give unsolicited advice because that’s what mentors do and that’s important to me. I liked that the program had a good mix of students from underrepresented groups that you don’t see as much in corporate Canada.”

When she thinks about the most powerful mentors she’s had along her career, she says the ones whose guidance went the furthest were available when she was at the point of moving up.

“I also found mentors to be most helpful when there were some commonalities, and by that I don’t mean they were women or a person of colour, but when they were in positions that I aspired to be in,” says Ms. Jackson. “That could work for Mohammed by reaching out to an upperclassman who is in a same trajectory or major and asking for their advice because they’re a little ahead.”

“One key thing I wanted to communicate to him was to be unapologetically true to himself, even at times when it may be uncomfortable being authentic, as he enters his professional life,” adds Ms. Jackson. “And to know the value he brings, especially in moments when he may doubt himself, and more importantly when others may underestimate him.”

Ms. Jackson had more advice for when Mr. Ali would be deciding on where he might work: that he should be thoughtful about the culture and environment because while many companies aspire to be collaborative and respectful, that’s not always the case.

“I hope he’ll take some of the most positive things that he witnessed at Capital One and use that when he’s thinking about joining a company,” she says. “While he’s interviewing for those jobs, he should take the opportunity to interview those companies, too, and see if all the things that he liked and respected here match up with the place where he starts his career.”

Source: To increase diversity at the top, show them what it looks like to be there

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COVID-19 Has Separated Those With Real Problems From Those With Mere ‘Snoblems’

2020/04/28 Leave a comment

Cute phrase, but one that accurately captures inequalities:

There are problems, and then there are “snoblems,” as social media like to call certain first-world personal issues during the pandemic. And almost anyone with a pen and a platform—myself included—has written about the latter, with harrowing tales of everything from long grocery lines during the lockdown to bad hair and awkward Zoom dates. But just as the privileged appear to be moving down the back side of the global coronavirus pandemic, it is those people in the margins, almost always ignored by society, that we need to be most worried about, not only for the sake of compassion, but for self-interest.

“The rigorously managed city-state of Singapore has suffered a recent spike in new cases simply because it wasn’t watching those who are easiest to ignore. ”

The curve has been flattening in most of the hardest hit areas of the global coronavirus crisis, from New York City to northern Italy, where  fewer than 500 deaths in a single day now feels oddly victorious. Wuhan is opening for business and Italy will slowly come out of its own coronavirus hibernation in early May.

But as Singapore has learned, premature celebrations of containment can easily backfire if success is only measured among those being counted. The rigorously managed city-state has suffered a recent spike in new cases simply because it wasn’t watching those who are easiest to ignore.

Migrant workers forced into lockdown in tight dorms are now emerging to help kickstart the Singapore economy, but during the height of the crisis, they were largely untested, and the virus ran wild among them. They now account for a huge increase in cases taxing the health care system and causing leaders to enforce a partial lockdown for the first time in the pandemic.

The same is likely to happen across Europe, where migrant workers and seasonal laborers are desperately needed to harvest winter crops. Special dispensation to cross closed borders is now being considered for Romanian harvest workers to come to Italy, where they will move into barrack-style lodgings and work side by side. In Great Britain, after calls for furloughed workers from non-agricultural sectors to step up and work in the farm industry were largely ignored, the government chartered flights to bring Romanian fruit and vegetable pickers in, despite travel bans.

Romania has had just over 11,000 positive cases, but as of the weekend had carried out only around 115,000 tests, meaning a large part of the population probably is infected without knowing. Italy does not have the capacity to test seasonal farm workers, who could introduce the virus in the southern regions of the country where winter agriculture is based, and which have largely escaped the brunt of the pandemic.

“On Greek islands, where thousands of refugees live in horrific conditions awaiting rulings on their asylum requests, testing is virtually nonexistent.”

The more than 71 million people displaced by war and conflict worldwide, as tallied by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have also been locked down without the sort of testing carried out on other populations. Human Rights Watch warns that as nations lift restrictions, many of the migrants will start moving again without any proper care during the critical early stages of the pandemic.

On Greek islands where thousands of refugees from the Middle East live in horrific conditions awaiting rulings on their asylum requests, testing is virtually nonexistent. A spokesperson for Doctors Without Borders told The Daily Beast that at the notorious Moria camp on the island of Lesbos, where 19,000 migrants and refugees live in a space meant for just 3,000, there is just one water tap for every 1,300 people and no soap at all.

“Families of five or six have to sleep in spaces of no more than three square meters [about 32 square feet],” Dr. Hilde Vochten, MSF’s Medical Coordinator in Greece, said recently. “This means that recommended measures such as frequent hand-washing and social distancing to prevent the spread of the virus are just impossible.”

As the world has learned from watching COVID-19 tear through cruise ships, aircraft carriers and New York  City, tight living arrangements are the perfect breeding ground for the virus. In so many parts of the marginalized world—from refugee camps to labor farms—social distancing cannot be enforced effectively and blanket testing for the virus is just not a priority.

These also are the environments where other health issues are rampant, from malnutrition to a lack of hygiene, which will complicate even mild cases of COVID-19, and where asymptomatic carriers could easily spread the disease to thousands of people before a single case is confirmed.

Moria, like other camps, is serviced by staff who live on the island and come and go from the camps, making it easy for them to spread the disease, and holes in the fences make it easy for many of the people there to move freely and return.

Writing in The Nation, author and human rights advocate Sasha Abramsky warns of a storm on the horizon. “So preoccupied are we by our own fears and by the U.S. pandemic calamity that we risk forgetting the misfortunes piled on misfortune of the 70 million people around the world currently displaced by war and social collapse,” he writes, warning that in the United States, Donald Trump’s policies on immigration have caused a bottleneck in facilities where those who may be carrying COVID-19 are neither treated nor released.

In the United States, where there are an estimated 11 million people Trump likes to call “illegal aliens,” many work in the sectors that solve the snoblems for the rest of us. A lack of access to health care could be deadly, not just for “them” but for “us,” too. Out of fear of deportation, these vulnerable undocumented workers are likely to avoid hospitals, and instead stay on the job, working in those businesses that are opening up in some states, like restaurants, massage parlors, and bowling alleys.

The stark degrees of suffering and vulnerability to COVID-19 have largely focused on the elderly and unwell in the developed world, the strain on normally well-developed health systems that should have been far better prepared, and the shocking lack of preparedness in the world’s richest economies. But, writing in The Economist, Bill Gates warns that as the pandemic slows in developed nations, it will accelerate in developing ones.

“Their experience, however, will be worse,” says Gates. “In poorer countries, where fewer jobs can be done remotely, distancing measures won’t work as well.” He notes that, “COVID-19 overwhelmed cities like New York, but the data suggest that even a single Manhattan hospital has more intensive-care beds than most African countries. Millions could die.”

Gates goes on to say he hopes wealthy nations include poorer ones as they move to a post-pandemic world. “Even the most self-interested person—or isolationist government—should agree with this by now,” he says. “This pandemic has shown us that viruses don’t obey border laws and that we are all connected biologically by a network of microscopic germs, whether we like it or not.”

But if nothing is done to integrate the needs of those vulnerable populations on the margins—whether at home in the “first world” or abroad in less affluent societies—experts warn they may contribute massively to the second wave of COVID-19. And they won’t be as easy to ignore the next time around.

Source: COVID-19 Has Separated Those With Real Problems From Those With Mere ‘Snoblems’

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Quebecers answer call to work on farms, but are they up to the task?

2020/04/28 Leave a comment

The productivity and cost benefits of foreign agricultural workers and the resulting dependence:

Melina Plante has found that, on her five-hectare fruit and vegetable farm south of Montreal by the U.S. border, one experienced Guatemalan farmhand can produce more than two Quebecers.

She and her husband, Francois D’Aoust, have hired the same four Guatemalan seasonal workers year after year. They typically clock up to 70 hours per week on the farm in Havelock, Que., and though the pay is relatively low, the workers value it.

But this year, Plante said, the farmhands are stuck in Guatemala due to travel restrictions their country has imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19.

They are among the roughly 5,000 seasonal and temporary workers that Quebec’s farmers’ union estimates will be missing on the province’s farms this year because of the pandemic, leaving Plante, D’Aoust and scores of other farmers with a tough choice: They can either reduce this year’s food production or take a chance on inexperienced but eager Quebecers thrown out of work by the pandemic.

In response to the foreign labour shortage, the provincial government on April 17 announced a $45-million program to pay an extra $100 a week above regular wages as an incentive to work on a farm. About 2,800 Quebecers have so far responded to Premier Francois Legault’s call.

But it is still unclear if there are enough unemployed Quebecers able and willing to do the work — and whether those who do will stick around if the economy picks up and their old jobs return.

Plante said bluntly that in the past, Quebecers have proven unreliable farmhands.

“That’s been our experience — and why we turned to foreign labour …. We estimate that one Guatemalan worker can be replaced by 2.5 Quebecers,” she said by phone from her farm.

The provincial program pays minimum wage, plus the $100 per week top-up and requires that applicants be available to work at least 25 hours per week. But Marcel Groleau, president of Union des producteurs agricoles, which represents about 42,000 Quebec farmers, says those kind of schedules simply won’t cut it.

“It will take farms — at a minimum — 40 hours per week, per employee, to replace the foreign labour,” he said in a recent interview.

The Canadian border remains open to seasonal farm workers, he explained, but many of them are having difficulty obtaining travel permits in their home countries.

“The pandemic made us realize how much we rely on foreign labour — but it’s been hard to attract local labour in the fields for many years now,” Groleau said.

Florence Lachapelle is hoping she’ll qualify for the extra $100 per week.

She had already agreed to work on Plante’s farm to help replace the Guatemalan farmhands before the province created the recruiting program. The 19-year-old visual arts student from Montreal met Plante and D’Aoust through family.

Lachapelle said she got involved in environmental activism at her junior college but since the pandemic doesn’t know what to do with her energy.

“I think the key to fighting climate change is through agricultural self-sufficiency and knowing how to work the earth in a respectful way,” she said in a recent interview. “I really want to learn how it works.”

And while people such as Lachapelle may be helping to fill a critical gap created by the pandemic, there are other fragile links in the agricultural supply chain exposed by the pandemic.

COVID-19 has highlighted the problems associated with industry concentration, particularly within the food-processing sector, Groleau said.

“There are fewer and fewer (processing plants), and the ones that are left are bigger and bigger,” he said. “When there is an issue at one of them, there are serious impacts for the rest of the supply chain.”

For example, the closure of a single meat packing plant in Alberta last week forced Canada to curtail beef exports to meet domestic demand. The Cargill-operated factory in Alberta has seen an outbreak linked to at least 484 cases of COVID-19s, including one death.

“We are not, at this point, anticipating shortages of beef,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said earlier in the week, “but prices might go up.”

Aside from higher prices, Plante said she and other farmers in her network expect food shortages this fall. She and her husband have already estimated they will have to cut production this year by about a third.

Pascal Theriault, a lecturer at McGill University’s farm management and technology program and vice-president of Quebec’s order of agronomists, said he hopes this crisis forces Canadians to rethink their relationship with food.

“We worked on producing food at the lowest possible cost and that’s all that counted,” he said in a recent interview. But over the years, international supply chains controlled by a handful of big players have contributed to Canadians’ alienation from the food they eat.

“I think the crisis will build awareness to eat more locally,” he said. “It’s not that we weren’t doing it before, but now we are really paying attention to it.”

Buying local could mean higher grocery bills for Canadian consumers used to seeing stores stocked with imported produce grown with cheaper labour under fewer regulations.

Canadians spend about 10 per cent of their budgets on food — one of the lowest proportions in the world, Theriault said. So there is room to pay a little more for local products — but not that much more, he said.

Lachapelle started her new job Thursday. She’ll live in a trailer on Plante’s farm and keep mostly to herself for two weeks to ensure she is not carrying the virus. Then when she starts what she expects will be gruelling work in the fields, she will respect physical distancing guidelines.

“I am very hard-working,” she said. “I’m 19, and I think I am ready, physically and mentally. I know it’s going to be a challenge. But I think it’ll be will super fun!”

Source: Quebecers answer call to work on farms, but are they up to the task?

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Alberta’s COVID-19 crisis is a migrant-worker crisis, too

2020/04/28 Leave a comment

More on temporary foreign and immigrant workers in relation to COVID-19 working conditions:

The 500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and one death tied to an Albertan meat-packing plant are unquestionably tragic. The Cargill plant in High River, Alta., temporarily ceased operations last week following the most serious COVID-19 outbreak in Canada, with cases linked to that plant constituting about a quarter of all cases in the province.

But it must also be understood in its broader context, beyond this pandemic. While this tragedy seems unique to this crisis, this outbreak has only exposed Canada and Alberta’s dependence on temporary labour migration and immigrant workers, the particular vulnerabilities they face, and the deep inequities in Canada’s occupational health and safety system.

Media reports and accounts from community advocates have indicated that most of the workers at the meat-packing plant came here from abroad, including many as temporary foreign workers. This is in line with what the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recently found, which is that workers who have been deemed “essential” are also disproportionately racialized. Immigrant workers earn less than the Canadian average and lack access to basic protections, including paid sick leave. These workers are systematically disadvantaged with respect to workplace safety, despite the rights due to them under the Employment Standards and the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The current OHS system relies on the “internal responsibility system,” which means it is driven by complaints and thus requires that workers have to be the one to assert their rights to workplace safety. This system disadvantages low-wage and precarious immigrant workers who may be unable to exercise these rights, or fear reprisal for speaking out about unsafe work conditions. This is borne out in data which shows that, in their first five years in Canada, immigrant men are at increased risk of work-related injuries that require medical attention compared to their Canadian-born counterparts.

The crisis has also revealed the way public policy intersects with an unequal labour market to exacerbate those vulnerabilities that temporary workers in particular face. While policies around temporary foreign workers change depending on prevailing political sentiments and public attitudes, the fundamentals of the program remain largely unchanged: Workers are recruited for labour that Canadians are unwilling to do.

Much of it, including meat packing, is “3D work” – difficult, dangerous and dirty. Research published in 2014 found that in Alberta, meat-packing employees have the highest probability of a disabling injury of all manufacturing employees, at a rate that is more than double the manufacturing average.

Temporary workers enter Canada on a time-limited work permit that is tied to their employer. The program is divided by skill level: Those in “high-skill” occupations have greater access to Canadian permanent residence than “low-skill” workers, including meat packers. What few pathways exist are largely dependent on a referral from employers, making it less likely for those workers to push for their rights.

Temporary migrant workers in occupations classified as low-skilled are structurally disadvantaged when it comes to workplace health and safety. They pay taxes and contribute to the employment insurance program, but if they become sick or injured, they can be laid off and sent back to their home country without access to the Canadian benefit system. Research shows that temporary migrant workers hide illnesses and injury for fear of being fired, and we cannot rule out that this influenced the Cargill workers who continued to do their job despite being sick.

It is deeply unjust that workers deemed “essential” in this pandemic are the same workers who are unable to access pathways to Canadian citizenship and to equitable workplace health and safety. The temporary foreign worker program is meant to address short-term and geographically specific needs in the labour market, yet as advocates and researchers have noted for years, “temporary” migrant workers often work in jobs that are not temporary at all.

As evidence of the inequities in workplace safety, the last inspection at the Cargill plant happened over video rather than through an in-person inspection. This begs important questions about the actual safety afforded those working in the plant. Workers have disclosed to the media that their concerns over safety and the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 went largely unheeded by management.

And yet, Alberta designated Cargill an essential service. That only ensured that one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world continued operations – while workers suffered the consequences.

Source: Alberta’s COVID-19 crisis is a migrant-worker crisis, too: Bronwyn Bragg

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Islamophobia row over choice of consultant for UK Covid role

2020/04/28 Leave a comment

Trevor Phillips continues to court controversy in this appointment. Suspect there were others the UK government could have called on for the analysis given the communications difficulties this has raised:

The appointment of a prominent consultant to investigate why Covid-19 is killing a disproportionately high number of minorities in the UK has sparked a backlash because of his involvement in an Islamophobia row.

Trevor Phillips, a former head of an equality watchdog, was suspended from the opposition Labour party this year over claims of Islamophobia but has been chosen to advise the UK’s main public health body on coronavirus death rates.

Data suggests that 34.5 per cent of critically ill patients were from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.

The 2011 census suggested that less than 11 per cent of the population was from a black or Asian background.

Mr Phillips was suspended from the Labour party over comments he made about the outlook of the British Muslim community and a case in which Pakistani men abused children.

“To appoint someone who is being investigated for racism is inappropriate and deeply insensitive,” said Yasmin Qureshi, an MP, in a letter to the head of Public Health England.

Ms Qureshi said that the appointment undermined the integrity and credibility of the review.

“It is critical that this review is independent and has the confidence of all communities, and so I urge you to reconsider this appointment as a matter of urgency,” she said.

Dr Zubaida Haque, deputy director of the Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank, also criticised the appointment.

“Covid 19 is not a culture war It’s the difference between life and death,” Dr Haque said in a tweet.

“The fact that Public Health England have appointed Trevor Phillips, someone with concerning attitudes towards Muslim communities as the main adviser into the racial disparities review is highly concerning.”

Mr Phillips claims to have introduced the term Islamophobia to Britain when he commissioned a 1997 report into discrimination.

He later said a “chasm” had opened between the thinking of Muslims and non-Muslims on social issues. He suggested that multiculturalism in the UK had failed.

The research consultancy run by Mr Phillips and Prof Richard Webber, a demographics expert, was appointed because of the large-scale studies it carries out on ethnicity.

Initial work conducted by his consultancy suggested that washing before prayers may have helped to curb the spread of the disease in some places, he said.

The investigation found that 13 of 17 Covid-19 hotspots in England and Wales had non-white populations above the national average.

“Everyone should be contributing anything they can to tackling this crisis,” Mr Phillips told the Huffington Post.

“Anyone can see the research Richard and I have already done on our website, which explains why we’ve been asked to help.”

Source: Islamophobia row over choice of consultant for UK Covid role

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