Edward Alden: Crackdown by U.S. Customs and Border Protection likely to drive a deeper wedge between Canada and U.S.

2020/02/07 Leave a comment

Canadian governments have always been worried about the “thickening” of the border and this commentary highlights the large discretion that regional authorities have and arguably, their abuse of that discretion:

On Saturday evening, Jan. 4, I was driving back from visiting family in Vancouver to my new home in Bellingham, Wash., when I ran into a massive line of border traffic at the Peace Arch crossing. Just two days prior, a U.S. drone strike had killed Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, and it occurred to me I might be witnessing a small piece of a security crackdown all along the U.S. borders.

But the truth has turned out to be far stranger. As was reported last week by Blaine’s The Northern Light newspaper, the border crackdown was not a national operation. It was a local one. At the direction of top officials in the Seattle Field Operation office, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers were pulling aside all crossers of Iranian origin, including many Canadian and U.S. citizens. Dozens of people were held at the border for as long as 12 hours and interrogated extensively before finally being released.

The operation was not just an isolated occurrence. Those entering the United States at Peace Arch and other western border ports of entry are facing a stepped-up enforcement regime that creates significant risks for all southbound travellers.

From 2018 to 2019, for example, the number of border crossers slapped with five-year bans barring them from entering the United States more than tripled from 91 to 309 at crossings overseen by the Seattle office, according to CBP data provided to CTV News. Even with the stepped-up border enforcement under the Trump administration, that was a far bigger increase than anywhere else along the U.S. border with Canada.

The legal provision, known as “expedited removal,” (ER) is an extreme measure that allows front-line CBP officers to bar re-entry to anyone who arrives at the border without valid entry documents, or is thought to be making fraudulent claims. Canada has no law that permits comparable penalties against U.S. citizens.

Lawyers for business groups in B.C. and Washington State say the expanded use of the provision is chilling trade and travel across the border. For example, some 18 Canadian truck drivers were recently hit with ER orders. They were engaged in a long-permitted practice of driving goods from the northern U.S. to the border with Mexico, where the goods were then picked up for delivery in Mexico.

The Seattle office is now ruling that this constitutes illegal transport within the United States, and that U.S.-based drivers must carry those loads. Instead of hitting the companies or drivers with fines, CBP is barring the drivers from entering the U.S. entirely. One Canadian trucking company says it lost about $1 million in business last year due to the loss of its drivers.

The new crackdown is quite different from the one that many Canadians and others experienced after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Then, the U.S. government tightened inspections and document requirements across all its land borders and airports. Indeed the number of Canadians crossing the land border has never recovered to the pre-9/11 peaks.

But local officials also possess expansive authority to launch their own crackdowns, as the operation to detain Iranians showed. CBP officers are free to ask border crossers any questions they wish, search vehicles, cell phones and other personal possessions, and even review social media accounts before permitting entry. The actions of the Seattle Field Office, which administers 54 border crossings all the way from Point Roberts, Washington to International Falls, Minnesota, show the discretion that local officials have to interpret CBP’s legal authorities in harsher ways.

An internal CBP memo leaked last week showed that the local office issued a “high threat alert” directing that anyone born in Iran, Lebanon or the Palestinian territories between 1961 and 2001 would be pulled into secondary screening for extensive vetting. CBP headquarters in Washington, D.C. said the actions by the local office are under investigation, and that “there is no rule that would permit us to target or stop individuals based on their nationality alone.”

One woman held at Peace Arch on Jan. 4 was born in Iran, but left 20 years ago with her family and is now a Canadian citizen, a U.S. green card holder, and holds a Nexus card, which required extensive security background checks by U.S. and Canadian authorities. Nonetheless, CBP officers pulled her into secondary screening at 5 p.m. on Saturday evening, interrogated her about family, friends and travel history, and did not release her until 5 a.m. the following day.

The recent actions should trigger much harder questions from both the B.C. and Washington State governments, and from Ottawa as well. If left unchecked, these initiatives by local CBP officials are likely to further chill cross-border travel and commerce, and drive a deeper wedge between the two countries.

Despite the generally strong economy on both sides of the border, and a stable Canadian dollar, the number of vehicle passengers crossing the border has fallen over the past year. An unpredictable border is a blow to the economy of Whatcom County, which relies heavily on Canadian consumers, but also discourages Americans from coming north to visit or do business in the Vancouver region.

State and provincial officials have talked grandly about the development of a “Cascadia Innovation Corridor” that would strengthen innovation and economic growth across the Pacific Northwest. But that dream rests on seamless travel across the border between B.C. and Washington State. Instead, thanks to increasingly aggressive border enforcement, the region is headed in the opposite direction.

Edward Alden is the Ross Distinguished Professor of U.S.-Canada Economic Relations at Western Washington University, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration and Security since 9/11.

Source: vancouversun.com/opinion/edward…

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Corpses and mob violence: How China’s social media echo chamber fuels coronavirus fears

2020/02/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

Corpses lie on the ground near hospitals. People kill their pets for fear the animals will spread disease. Mobs chase down people without masks and angrily force them to cover up.

These are the scenes flooding social media in China as the country grapples with the novel coronavirus that has prompted the World Health Organization to declare a global emergency.

But how much of what the Chinese people and international observers are seeing on social media is true?

Public mistrust of government authorities in China has reached such a severe level, observers say, that many Chinese people have turned to alternative online sources of information — often of questionable veracity.

“Many Chinese people are well aware of the government’s long track record of censoring information about threats to public health,” said Sarah Cook, director of the China Media Bulletin at human rights research group Freedom House.

“This fuels deep mistrust in official updates and undermines efforts to reduce fear and anxiety,” she told The Star.

There’s history to the earned mistrust. In the first few months of the SARS outbreak in 2003, the Chinese government tried to keep it a secret. By the time the new virus was publicly reported, five people had died and hundreds had already fallen ill. It was a health disaster that led to heaps of global backlash, and China sacked its health minister and the mayor of Beijing in apparent contrition about the mishandling.

While central government authorities in Beijing were much quicker to publicly report the new coronavirus, the local Wuhan city government initially censored the first reports of a new illness emerging in the city last December. Medical experts said in a research paper published in The Lancet that they’ve found new evidence that the origin of the outbreak may not have been a seafood market in Wuhan as the Chinese government reported, and the first human infections may have occurred in November.

Li Wang is among those glued to social media.

The economics researcher at the University of New Brunswick and former Canadian student is currently on lockdown in Wuhan after flying home to visit family during Lunar New Year.

To pass the time, he was one of millions of Chinese glued to their screens watching a livestream of a hospital being built in ten days to house patients that have overwhelmed Wuhan’s hospitals. The government says a crew of 7,000 worked around the clock to build the 1,000-bed hospital, and vowed to build another this week.

“Everyone is afraid to go outside … Almost everyone I have talked to online are panicked,” Wang said. Because he is not a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, he’s not able to board the chartered flight Canada is sending to bring back Canadians from the city.

China’s control of social media is a factor that adds to the confusion. Many people are familiar with mainland China’s “Great Firewall,” the internet censorship apparatus that automatically blocks international social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram as well as many news outlets and the entire suite of Google services.

Chinese authorities are continually developing and fine-tuning their ability to censor social media posts on domestic websites such as the Twitter-like Weibo blogging platform. They even have the ability to surveil and automatically block parts of private conservations on chat apps such as WeChat.

WeChat is the preferred platform for many in China during the coronavirus outbreak because the chat groups there tend to be small or medium-sized groups where some users know each other personally.

“People are getting at least some information from individuals they personally know and trust (on WeChat typically), but that doesn’t make them insusceptible from the spread of false information,” said Cook.

“But for those who personally know the original source — say a relative who is a nurse in Wuhan — her information will likely appear very credible and believable to them and possibly rightly so.”

However, like all social media platforms, the quality of what a user sees depends on the quality of the people they have in their circles. A WeChat user who is friends with many doctors and nurses would likely get more reliable information.

Perhaps aware of the communication challenges government control over the scarce number of independent media outlets in China has seemed to lighten over the past several weeks.

As a result, members of the public in China are turning to respected Chinese publications like Caixin to read quality journalism about the outbreak. The magazine recently published a four-part series produced by dozens of journalistsincluding a detailed account of the Wuhan government’s coverup of the crisis.

So are the images on social media real?

Yuri Qin, an editor at the Berkeley-based China Digital Times, a bilingual website that monitors the Chinese internet, says that unfortunately, some of the horrible videos and photographs might be real, although they are difficult to verify.

“Authorities in Wuhan have imposed some brutal measures to prevent the spread, and because of the panic some people are cruel to each other and sometimes they use extreme means to drive out or detain suspected carriers of the disease,” Qin told The Star in an email.

She says the loss of credibility of the local government has seemed to exacerbate paranoia and fear among citizens of Wuhan.

However, it’s also helpful to keep in mind that among the hundreds of millions of Chinese social media users, some have retained their sense of humour even during a health crisis. Some videos that have gone viral are jokes, and likely stem from people trying to make the best of their situations.

What are some reliable sources of English-language translations of Chinese social media posts on coronavirus?

The China Digital Times verifies and translates blog posts and diary entries from people living in China dealing with the coronavirus enforced quarantines and health checks.

The website What’s on Weibo tracks and analyses viral social media posts on China’s most popular platforms.

Bill Bishop’s Sinocism newsletter regularly compiles and comments on Chinese-language media sources on a variety of news topics.

Source: Corpses and mob violence: How China’s social media echo chamber fuels coronavirus fears

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Israel Trump’s plan revokes Israeli Arabs’ citizenship

2020/02/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

Just two years ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “I don’t intend to bring a diplomatic plan on the eve of the elections.” He was responding to a reporter who challenged him on saying in 2008 that then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, “neck-deep in investigations, has no moral or public mandate to make fateful decisions for Israel” in a quest for political survival. A few days ago, on Jan. 28, Netanyahu did exactly what he said he would not do.

Several hours after “making history” by becoming the first sitting Israeli prime minister to be officially charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Netanyahu took part in the unveiling ceremony of President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” for Israeli-Palestinian peace, declaring it a “historic day like May 1948,” when Israel declared independence.

Peace is unlikely to emerge from Trump’s plan, but Netanyahu proved once again that all means justify his end of winning the March 2 elections and remaining in the prime minister’s official residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem. To that end, he mobilized Trump’s help in presenting an alleged peace plan that consists of everything except peace and a Palestinian partner. The East Room ceremony resembled a wedding without the bride, celebrating a deal between Israel and the United States, rather than Israel and the Palestinians.

As expected, the Palestinian leadership rejected the plan. Channel 12 reported that on Jan. 29, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sent Netanyahu a handwritten note informing him, “The Palestinian Authority now sees itself as free to disregard the agreements with Israel, including security cooperation.”

Anyone delving further into the details of the 80-plus-page proposal could not have missed the surprising clause allowing Israel to transfer to a future Palestinian state the populated Arab communities in the so-called Triangle of central Israel: Kufr Qara, Arara, Baka al-Garbiyeh, Umm al-Fahm, Kalansua, Taybeh, Kafr Qasem, Tira, Kafr Bara and Jaljulya.

This is not the first time an Israeli government during the Netanyahu era has tried to trade away its Arab citizens in the Triangle, which borders the West Bank, by moving the border and thereby turning them into nationals of a future Palestinian state. The idea previously arose in 2013 when US Secretary of State John Kerry mediated peace talks between the two sides, with the clear goal of finding a solution to the land swap issue. There also appears to have been a hidden agenda — reducing the number of Israel’s Arab citizens — an estimated 300,000 of who live in the Triangle communities.

“Just as with many earlier initiatives, this one too does not have any hold or acceptance among the Arab Israeli or Palestinian public,” Jamal Mjadlah, a social activist from Baka al-Garbiyeh, told Al-Monitor. “This is an initiative devoid of justice and logic, which will not be accepted and will not be adopted.”

Salah Smara, a high-tech engineer from Tira, asserted to Al-Monitor, “This is an attempt to enhance ideologies espousing population transfer using political tools to get rid of the Arab citizens rather than physically removing people from their homes. The motivations are racial — to preserve demographic superiority.”

The initiative could also have the absurd and tragic impact on many families by tearing them, as in the case of Firas Azam, an attorney born in Taybeh but now living in the coastal Mediterranean city of Haifa. If the land swap goes through, he would remain an Israeli citizen, but his mother and brother’s Israeli citizenship would be revoked.

“‘And we were like strangers in our land.’ This is my headline for this absurd move,” Azam told Al-Monitor. “Our state, where we grew up, went to school, worked, respected its laws and principles, does not want us anymore and is willing to give us up just like that. I would have expected the Jews to understand this better than any other people in the world, but I guess I was wrong.”

Trump and Netanyahu present the idea of exchanging populated lands as targeting communities that “largely self-identify as Palestinians,” according to the plan. A 2019 study by the Israel Democracy Institute found, however, that only 13% of Arab Israeli citizens define themselves as “Palestinians” in terms of their main identity, whereas 65% are “proud to be Israelis.” The study further indicates that 83% of Israeli Arab citizens want to integrate into Israeli society and become full members of it.

The above results do not conform to the premise of the Trump plan, proving yet again that it is nothing more than an attempt by Netanyahu and Israel’s political right to shrink the number of Israel’s Arab citizens, who constitute 21% of the state’s population. That, in turn, would reduce the number of Arab voters, who obviously do not tend to vote for right-wing parties, helping the right perpetuate its rule and prevent the formation of a center-left government.

Shimon Sheves, who served as director general of the Prime Minister’s Office under the late Yitzhak Rabin, shared his thoughts on Facebook about the actual difference between the so-called deal of the century and Rabin’s peace plan. Indeed, there are many similarities between the American blueprint and the one charted by Rabin, who was, as we know, assassinated because of the peace he sought to advance. At the time, it was Netanyahu who led numerous protests against Rabin and addressed rallies at which Rabin was dubbed a traitor and the crowd chanted, “With blood and fire, we will expel Rabin.” The difference is that Rabin did not agree to land swaps, as Ben Caspit explained in a Jan. 29 Al-Monitor article. Perhaps that is what the Netanyahu-led right really wants: to revoke the citizenship of hundreds of thousands of the state’s Arab citizens.

With an effective and well-targeted campaign by the Arab Joint List, currently the third largest Knesset faction, the initiative could backfire against Netanyahu. Such was the case with the so-called Camera Law, a Likud-led initiative to install cameras at Arab polling stations. The alleged idea was to guard against voter fraud, but in reality was devised to intimidate Arab voters. The move ultimately prompted a significantly high Arab turnout in protest in the September 2019 elections. If the current initiative gains ground, Netanyahu will once again be crowned the main campaigner of the Joint List.

Source: Israel Trump’s plan revokes Israeli Arabs’ citizenship

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/02/05/us/politics/ap-us-trump-foreign-policy.html

Equally revealing:

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser warned Palestinians on Wednesday that Israeli settlements will continue to expand because rising anti-Semitism around the world means more Jews will immigrate to Israel.

Addressing many hot-button global issues in a speech and discussion with foreign diplomats to the United States, Robert O’Brien also said the president hoped to go to Beijing to talk to the Chinese about a three-way nuclear arms control pact with the U.S. and Russia. He said the president still hopes that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will resume nuclear talks with the U.S.

O’Brien defended Trump’s Mideast peace plan, which was embraced by Israel but rejected by the Palestinians. O’Brien said the plan is not “perfect,” but urged the Palestinians to negotiate terms of the proposed deal. The deal offers economic benefits that would allow Palestine to become the “Singapore of the Middle East,” he said.

The Palestinians have roundly denounced the proposal, which offers them limited self-rule in scattered chunks of territory with a capital on the outskirts of Jerusalem while allowing Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank. Protesters have burned U.S. and Israeli flags as well as posters of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stood with Trump at the White House when he rolled out the plan last week.

“This could be the last opportunity for a two-state solution,” O’Brien said at the Meridian International Center. “The Israeli birth rate is strong and is growing because sadly anti-Semitism in Europe and other places around the world is encouraging more Jews to return to Israel. The settlements are going to continue to expand. If this freeze on settlements doesn’t hold. If this peace process doesn’t work, it may be physically impossible to have a two-state solution.”

It was unusual for a high-level administration official to tie anti-Semitism to the settlements. The Palestinians, as well as much of the international community, view the settlements in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem — territories seized by Israel in the 1967 war — as illegal and a major obstacle to peace. But O’Brien’s comments are in line with the Trump administration strongly favoring Israel in the longtime conflict.

O’Brien didn’t note that the Palestinian population is growing too in both the Palestinian territories and Israel, according to U.N. statistics. The Palestinian population is growing at roughly 2.4% a year, 33% higher than Israel’s.

Those demographic shifts have led previous peacemakers to warn that Israel risks losing its ability to remain both a Jewish state and a democracy without a two-state solution that gives the Palestinians enough inhabitable and arable land to accommodate their growing numbers.

Trump’s plan would foresee the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, but would allow Israel to annex all Jewish settlements in the West Bank, as well as the strategic Jordan Valley.

U.S. officials had discouraged Netanyahu from proceeding with plans to immediately annex any new territory and had played down the possibility that the release of the plan would make any such move imminent. But after the rollout, Netanyahu vowed to bring his West Bank annexation plans to a vote at his next Cabinet meeting just days away.

That surprised and frustrated the Americans. In a series of interviews, Trump’s point people on Israel jammed the brakes on annexation, putting greater emphasis on the prospects of Palestinian statehood that Netanyahu was trying to sidestep.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said a U.S.-Israeli committee would need to be formed to ensure that any move matches up with the Trump administration’s “conceptual map.” Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a chief architect of the plan, said Israel should wait until after the March 2 Israeli elections before annexing territory.

Any quick move to annex land would galvanize Netanyahu’s hard-line base and shift the focus of his reelection campaign away from his legal woes. But annexation also would likely spark an international backlash, and neighboring Jordan, a key player in Middle East peace efforts, has warned against it. It could also foreclose the possibility of a negotiated two-state solution.

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Human Rights Watch: More Than 200 Salvadorans Were Abused, Killed After Deportation

2020/02/07 Leave a comment

A reminder of the impact of the Trump administration policies:

After living in the U.S. for five years, cousins Walter T. and Gaspar T. were deported to their home country of El Salvador in 2019, where they were ripped from their beds one night and beaten by police, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

“They began beating us until we arrived at the police barracks,” Gaspar said in interviews.

The thrashings went on there for three days, according to the men. Despite threats from authorities that they’d be charged with gang membership, they were eventually released. No charges were filed.

Walter and Gaspar, who say they had initially fled El Salvador to escape forcible gang recruitment, had hoped to gain asylum in the U.S. But their applications were denied.

The pair’s experience is one of more than 200 cases uncovered by Human Rights Watch in which Salvadorans are put in harm’s way — at risk of violence at the hands of gangs, law enforcement or security forces — as a result of tightening asylum and immigration policies in the U.S.

“Salvadorans are facing murder, rape, and other violence after deportation in shockingly high numbers, while the US government narrows Salvadorans’ access to asylum and turns a blind eye to the deadly results of its callous policies,” said Alison Parker managing director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch and coauthor of the report.

The 117-page report was compiled over a year and a half using court records, press reports and first-hand interviews with surviving family members and nongovernmental agency workers.

In all, researchers found 138 cases of repatriated Salvadorans killed since 2013. More than 70 others were beaten, sexually assaulted, extorted, tortured or went missing, according to the study. But, the reports says, the deaths “represent the tip of the iceberg—as … people deported to El Salvador encounter a wide range of human rights abuses that fall short of death.”

Until now, no government, U.N. or nongovernmental organization has monitored what happens to people when they’re returned to El Salvador, according to HRW.

“This report begins to fill that gap,” the study says.

Source: Human Rights Watch: More Than 200 Salvadorans Were Abused, Killed After Deportation

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How Iranian immigrants can be role models for diversity in STEM

2020/02/07 Leave a comment

Of interest:

When I first came to the United States from Iran in 2007 for a doctorate in computer science and machine learning, I was surprised by how few women attended industry conferences. Those I did meet were usually fellow immigrants.

Diversity and gender equality drive creativity and spur innovation across the globe. It’s why the United Nations has declared Feb.11 the International Day of Women and Girls in Science and why the U.S. House of Representatives just launched the first-ever Women in STEM Caucus. The bipartisan initiative, started by four female congresswomen, now has 13 members from both sides of the aisle. The caucus aims to increase the presence of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM across the country.

In Tehran, where I grew up, it’s considered normal for girls to study computer programming from an early age. That culture has opened the door for new generations of female engineers. In fact, in Iran, nearly 70 percent of university graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are women.

That’s a sharp contrast with the United States, where women are vastly underrepresented in STEM fields. Data by the Council of Graduate Schools found that in 2018 U.S. women earned only about a quarter of PhDs in engineering, math and computer science. This is at a time when the United States is facing a critical shortage of STEM workers; in 2015, 14 states advertised 20 STEM jobs for every unemployed STEM worker, according to New American Economy. That demand is projected to grow over the next decade.

Today, I’m the executive vice president and chief algorithms officer for Overstock.com, a tech-driven online retailer committed to diversity. As an immigrant and a woman, I bring a wealth of experiences that help me see problems differently. Plenty of data shows women bring skill sets, strategic thinking and creativity valued by businesses. Women also take women’s needs to heart when creating products and services for them, whether it’s heart medication, seat belts or air bags designed for our physiques. Simply put, women are an essential part of the talent pool.

American companies should strive for increased diversity and inclusivity throughout their organizations. Teachers need to create inclusive classrooms that value girls’ and women’s opinions. Those of us in the field can create better representation by hiring and championing female colleagues or requesting female-friendly policies inside the companies where we work. Leaders in our communities also need to do more to encourage women, immigrants and minorities to enter STEM fields. I applaud the Congressional Women in STEM Caucus, whose mandate is to improve access to hands-on learning, technical training and real-world application of skills required in these jobs.

But we also need to remember the value of our personal stories in influencing young lives. If young American women and girls, including immigrants and minorities, are going to embrace STEM, they’re going to need more support and role models. As Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of West Chester, Pa., said, she was one of 10 women in her engineering major and doesn’t think the numbers have changed much in 30 years.

A 2018 study of 6,000 American young women conducted by Microsoft and KRC Research found that girls who know a woman in STEM are more than 70 percent more likely to know how to pursue a STEM career and what types of specific jobs might utilize a STEM skillset.

The study said parents’ encouragement was particularly influential in whether girls cultivated a love for science and technology and stuck with these fields over time. Likewise those of us already working in these industries can also serve as mentors for them, whether it’s volunteering at coding camps or sharing our enthusiasm for AI and robotics over ice cream.

Or we can simply raise our hands high in our communities and say: “This is what a female coder, engineer, biotech founder, mathematician or science professor looks like. You can be one, too.” That’s especially important, because 30 percent of girls and 40 percent of women described a man when asked what a “typical” scientist or engineer looked like.

As a woman in STEM, an Iranian American citizen and an immigrant, I want to encourage new generations to realize their potential. With any luck, I’ll see many more female faces at industry conferences to come.

Dr. Kamelia Aryafar is executive vice president and chief algorithms officer for Overstock.com.

Source: How Iranian immigrants can be role models for diversity in STEM

Filed under gender, Immigration Tagged with , , ,

The Bloc changes its tune on Canada’s court challenges program

2020/02/07 Leave a comment

Twelve years ago, a Bloc Québécois MP stood in the House of Commons to proclaim his party’s support for the court challenges program — a federal initiative that had been providing grants to individuals and groups who sought to defend or assert their constitutional or language rights through the courts.

Stephen Harper’s Conservative government announced its intention to eliminate funding for the program in 2006.

“Philosopher and writer Paul Valéry said that the greatness of a civilization is measured in its treatment of minorities,” said Réal Ménard, who was the MP for Hochelaga from 1993 to 2009.

The Bloc Quebecois, Menard said, “has always been extremely supportive of the court challenges program.”

Twelve years later, the Bloc has discovered a limit to its enthusiasm for the program, which was reinstated by Justin Trudeau’s government in 2017. Its zeal appears to end at Bill 21, the Quebec law that bans many of the province’s public servants from wearing religious symbols or articles clothing, such as hijabs or turbans, while at work.

The Montreal Gazette reported this week that Montreal’s English school board received $125,000 through the program to help fund a legal challenge to Bill 21. The school board quickly renounced the funding, but not before the Bloc — which had been demanding that the federal government stay out of the fight over Quebec’s so-called secularism law — expressed its vehement displeasure.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet says the federal government has no business funding legal challenges of Bill 21. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

When challenged by Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet in the House this week, Trudeau was quick to note that the court challenges program is an arms-length institution that makes its funding decisions completely independent of the federal government.

We don’t know if the court challenges program is funding any other challenges to Bill 21; the grants are confidential. But it provide federal support to a cause that Trudeau has been reluctant to engage with directly.

The history here is long and rich.

The program that died many deaths

The court challenges program actually has its roots in Pierre Trudeau’s push to establish official bilingualism — and his own government’s reluctance to directly intervene against Bill 101, the French-language charter that was introduced in 1977 by Quebec’s Parti Québécois government.

Back then, the Liberals decided against trying to disallow the legislation or referring it to the Supreme Court. But they did create a program that would provide financial support to individuals or groups who wished to challenge provincial language laws — both anglophones in Quebec and francophones in other provinces.

The program was later expanded by Brian Mulroney’s government to cover other equality rights, but the Progressive Conservatives later reversed course and decided to withdraw funding. Jean Chrétien’s Liberals restored the program in 1994. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives took a dim view of the program’s activities and quickly moved to cancel it again in 2006.

By then, the program had become a significant source of financial support for francophones outside Quebec who wished to assert their rights. A House committee report in 2007 listed a number of linguistic cases that had benefited from program funding, including several that challenged provincial or federal governments.

“Many of the cases funded by the program resulted in important language rights precedents in Canadian constitutional law.” Richard Nadeau, another Bloc MP, told the House in 2008. “They made a significant contribution to official language minority rights in Canada.”

Stéphane Dion, Liberal leader at the time, vowed that a Liberal government would revive it. Justin Trudeau made good on that promise in 2017 with a commitment of $1.5 million in annual funding and an expanded mandate to cover a wider array of rights-based cases.

Watch

Trudeau to Singh: Why close the door to intervention on Bill 21?

  • 4 months ago
  • 1:15
  • Turn captions on

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh speaks about his battle against discrimination after Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau challenges him to say he’ll intervene on Quebec’s secularism law. 1:15

When asked directly about Bill 21, Trudeau has maintained that he does not believe any government has the right to tell people what to wear. But he has refrained from getting the federal government directly involved — even while not ruling out the possibility of intervening at some point.

There is a case to be made for Ottawa staying out and letting Quebeckers themselves lead the challenges to the law. Federal involvement could further inflame public opinion in a province that prizes its autonomy. But the court challenges program offers an option for indirect support — something that should be harder for Quebec nationalists to demonize because politicians aren’t involved in deciding who gets the funding.

Majority will, minority rights

The Liberal Party’s interest in reviving the program predated the discussion in Quebec that led to Bill 21, but Liberals also might think that Bill 21 is exactly the sort of thing that the court challenges program exists to deal with.

In an interview with CBC’s Power & Politics this week, Blanchet presented two arguments against providing the funding to Montreal’s English school boards.

First, he argued that the school boards already have ample resources and shouldn’t need federal funding to mount a legal challenge. That could be an argument for changing the funding criteria.

But his second argument was much broader.

“What I say is that a citizen, a group, an institution has the right to disagree with the law. It has a right to challenge the law in court,” he said. “What we cannot accept, and we’ve been saying that for a whole year now, is when the government is taking Quebec taxpayers’ money to challenge a law which is largely approved by Quebec citizens and people. This is what we do not agree with.”

In a similar statement released by the Bloc on Wednesday, Blanchet is quoted as saying that the will of Quebec’s National Assembly, which passed Bill 21, must be respected.

That amounts to a suggestion that the court challenges program should be severely curtailed — that it should not be used to support challenges against any rightfully adopted provincial or federal law, particularly if the law is popular with the general public.

Constitutional and human rights exist, in part, to protect individuals and groups against abuse by the majority. But Blanchet now suggests that the court challenges program — a program designed to help protect those rights — should defer to that majority.

Is a society to be judged by how it treats all of its minorities — or just by how it treats those minorities who are easier to support politically?

Source: The Bloc changes its tune on Canada’s court challenges program

Filed under Multiculturalism

Nuance needed when it comes to citizenship in the modern world

2020/02/06 2 Comments

Some similar questions regarding Canadian policy and consular obligations with the Canadian tendency to more inclusive approaches as seen in the government’s response to the Ukraine International shoot down and Iranian Canadians and the evacuation of Chinese Canadians, including some permanent residents to keep families together, from Wuhan:

While the initial debate about the Australians in Wuhan has focussed on details such as whether or not evacuees would (or should) pay something towards the cost of the flights, and whether the controversial immigration detention facility at Christmas Island is the appropriate housing area for quarantine, another curious matter sits in the background. What is our country’s responsibility, if any, for evacuating citizens, permanent residents and others from the site of a pandemic, or other crisis overseas? And what does citizenship mean in these circumstances?

Australia has a curious relationship with citizenship. As a migrant country, Australia has long seen citizenship as a key pillar of our economic policy: attracting people from around the world to join the population, offering a better life in return for enhancing the nation’s future prosperity.

But citizenship is not always a simple, one-way story that ends with life in Australia and single Australian citizenship. And the dynamic of multiple citizenships in the modern world means that migrants and refugees might not just stay put in Australia, but may split residence between countries.

The legal term of Australian citizenship is only 70 years old. It was established in 1948, with Australians remaining British subjects – a status that was removed only in 1984. From 1986, dual citizenship was established, with people from other countries allowed to take up Australian citizenship and retain their original nationality. It was only in 2002, that Australian citizens were allowed – under Australian law – to assume citizenship of another country without first renouncing their Australian citizenship.

Some 33.3 per cent of Australians were born overseas, which provides one indication of some of numbers possibly at play with multiple citizenship.

But outside economic policy, changes in citizenship law in Australia and overseas, and changes in an increasingly complex strategic environment, have thrown up some thorny problems. The 2017 federal parliamentarian citizenship crisis and the fate of the children of Australians who travelled to the Middle East to join the self-proclaimed Islamic State are recent examples.

Reporting around the coronavirus outbreak, with headlines such as “Aussie kids trapped in Wuhan”, show a simplistic perception of citizenship. It suggests those affected only hold Australian citizenship and have been inadvertently caught in a crisis overseas and need the help of their government. The reality is often more complex, with many dual or other multiple citizenship holders affected by this and other crises. Some of those Aussie kids are also Chinese. As are their parents. They may be long-term residents of Wuhan or on a first visit to family.

And as longstanding government policy – easily found on DFAT’s Smartraveller website – makes clear, it is an individual’s responsibility, not government’s, to manage their own safety and well being when overseas. In the case of the current outbreak, however, the government has done the right thing in enabling those Australians who wish to leave to do so.

Despite the sometimes-changeable nature of Australia’s bilateral relationship with China in recent years, the movement of Australians, including dual-nationals, out of China has not presented as an issue.

But this latest experience throws in to question what we do in the future. Do we need a more nuanced approach to how we deal with dual nationals located in their other home countries?

Do the challenges of conflict, pandemics, and strategic tension in our region and in the rise of non-traditional threats such as global terrorism, mean that we need to maintain awareness not only of how migration affects economic development and jobs, but also how it affects security. As the coronavirus reminds us, this includes health security.

Perhaps now is the time to talk with countries such as China, India and the Philippines, which many Australians also call home, about a shared approach to how we each look after our shared citizens in health and other crises.

We have arrangements with Canada, New Zealand and other countries on reciprocal assistance evacuating our citizens from conflict areas, natural disasters and other emergencies. The coronavirus could be a useful reference for similar discussions on deciding when it’s appropriate for Australian dual nationals to remain in country, and how all countries involved can work together to ensure the best assistance is provided in place.

The recent establishment of the Home Affairs portfolio to include immigration along with security, emergency management and other roles, and raising it to a central agency of government, means that we have the policy levers to consider how migration and citizenship works with security and other roles.

A future Home Affairs White Paper could provide strategic direction on where and how Australian citizenship and immigration could and should support how Australia engages globally.

Regardless of government policy, we need better awareness within our community of what citizenship currently looks like, and what our policy settings are, in order to better inform the public discussion of what we expect our government to do for our citizens, wherever they chose to be around the world. Here, the media plays a pivotal role in explaining what’s going on, and ensuring we don’t fall into a simplistic representation of Australians.

Australia’s success is due in part to the continual change in what it is to be Australian, and what constitutes Australian interests. But as we deal with complex challenges, like coronavirus, we need to be mindful that what it is to be Australian is not always simple.

Source: Nuance needed when it comes to citizenship in the modern world

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USA: The Next Harmful Immigration Move Against International Students

2020/02/06 Leave a comment

Significant short and longer term impact. Haven’t seen data on Canadian visa overstays for international students but likely less given Canadian Experience Class pathway to permanent residence:

The next Trump administration action taken against high-skilled foreign nationals may be to limit the length of stay for international students after they are admitted to the United States. This would be done through a new rule eliminating “duration of status,” which now allows a student, once admitted to America, to continue his or her studies until completion, without requiring additional approvals.

The vehicle for this new restriction would be a new regulation to establish a “maximum period of authorized stay for students.” The targeted date for publishing the proposed rule is February 2020.

Replacing the current “duration of status” for international students with a “maximum period of authorized stay” would increase uncertainty for students. It would require them to gain new approvals at each stage of their studies in the United States, such as a transition from an undergraduate to a graduate-level program. New approvals also would be needed if academic programs take longer than anticipated.

In interviews, educators estimate extra costs incurred by international students could be $1,500 or more per extension. Moreover, students would face the prospect of USCIS adjudicators denying student extension requests, much like many H-1B visa holders experience today when trying to extend their status and are forced to leave the country. The denial rate was 24% for H-1B petitions for new employment and 12% for continuing employment through the first three quarters of FY 2019, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis.

Educators and analysts blame higher costs in the United States and restrictive Trump administration immigration policies for recent declines in international student enrollment. The new policy would raise costs higher for students and be much more restrictive than the status quo.

Given the significant delays in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) processing under its current workload, the agency is unlikely to approve applications in time for many students. At the Texas Service Center, as of February 4, 2020, the processing time was 9 to 11 and a half months for an “Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status (I-539).” That means a student would need to file a year in advance for an extension, which likely would not even be permitted by USCIS.

What happens if a student files a timely application but USCIS fails to approve it in time? The student would be in jeopardy unless he or she leaves the country, according to USCIS.

The agency includes the following on a list of Q&As for an extension of stay: “What if I file for an extension of stay on time but USCIS doesn’t make a decision before my I–94 expires? Your lawful nonimmigrant status ends, and you are out of status, when your Form I-94 expires, even if you have timely applied to extend your nonimmigrant status . . . DHS [Department of Homeland Security] may bring a removal proceeding against you, even if you have an application for extension of status pending.”

The administration has provided little justification for this significant change in policy, which was first placed on the regulatory agenda in October 2018. The “Statement of Need” for the rule to end duration of status reads: “The failure to provide certain categories of nonimmigrants with specific dates for their authorized periods of stay can cause confusion over how long they may lawfully remain in the United States and has complicated the efforts to reduce overstay rates for nonimmigrant students. The clarity created by date-certain admissions will help reduce the overstay rate.”

The only evidence presented on international student overstay rates remains a series of flawed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports – and even those reports show student overstay rates have dropped significantly.

As discussed previously, Department of Homeland Security reports include as “overstays” people who did not necessarily overstay a visa, but individuals who DHS could not confirm had departed the United States. The distinction is important. “The DHS figures represent actual overstays plus arrivals whose departure could not be verified,” writes Robert Warren, a senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies in an analysis.

Attorney Paul Virtue, a former top official at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, told me in an interview: “The DHS report on overstays is dependent on the accuracy of information in SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) and the agency’s ability to match entry and exit information, especially for students who, for example, may have departed through a land port of entry or have had a change of status that was not updated in SEVIS . . . there is still too much guesswork built into the DHS assumptions concerning the number of overstays among the student and exchange visitor populations.” (Emphasis added.)

Recent DHS reports show the purported overstay rate for F-1 students declined by 42% between FY 2016 and FY 2018, falling from 6.19% in FY 2016 to 3.59% in FY 2018. Despite this, DHS has not backed away from the potential rule to abolish duration of status and establish a maximum period of authorized stay for F-1 students.

Many in the international education community believe the “overstay” argument is being used to justify the policy rather than the actual impetus for eliminating duration of status. The motivation, many suspect, is to limit or discourage more international students from coming to the United States, as evidenced by a series of policies the administration has put forward to restrict international students and employment-based immigration.

New enrollment of international students at U.S. universities declined by more than 10% between the 2015-16 and 2018-2019 academic years. At the same time, in Australia the enrollment of international students in higher education increased by 47% between 2015 and 2018, according to Australian government data.

In Canada, the number of Indian international students rose from 76,075 in 2016 to 172,625 in 2018, an increase of 127%, according to the Canadian Bureau for International Education. Canada makes it easy for international students to transition to work after graduation, which creates a path to permanent residence, notes Toronto-based attorney Peter Rekai. The number of Indians obtaining permanent residence in Canada doubled between 2016 and 2019.

At a time when other countries are attracting more students, increasing costs and adding new layers of uncertainty will likely discourage international students from coming to the United States.

Source: The Next Harmful Immigration Move Against International Students

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Richmond council asks feds to ban birth tourism

2020/02/06 Leave a comment

More from the epicentre. Good that they are also looking at possible local approaches:

Richmond city council wants the new federal minister of immigration to tackle the problem of birth tourism.

A motion by Coun. Carol Day to write to Marco Mendicino, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, urging him to end birthright citizenship for non-Canadians was supported by almost all of council at Monday’s committee meeting.

In the meantime, city staff are fining birth tourism operators on any illegal activity they may be running – but because there is no business license for birth tourism, they can’t be shut down for advertising birth tourism services, explained Cecelia Achiam, general manager of community safety.

“We do not regulate something that we could not approve, so birth tourism is not something that we could regulate at this point,” Achiam said.

This was challenged by the mayor, Malcolm Brodie, however, at the meeting, and he asked staff to find out whether it is possible to shut them down based on the fact they are an illegal business.

“If they’re doing something that’s unlicensed and not allowed, you’re telling me you can’t do anything about it – surely it’s operating a business without a license,” Brodie said.

Currently, staff will fine any activity advertised by birth tourism services if they don’t have a license, explained Achiam, for example, if they advertise tutoring services, the city can fine them if they don’t have a business license for tutoring – or if they advertise food services and airport pickup/dropoff services without the correct licenses.

The motion passed by council was to write to the new minister to ask for “immediate permanent changes” to end automatic citizenship for babies born in Canada to non-resident, non-Canadian parents.

Greene pointed out that staffing at Richmond Hospital is based on census data, but this would not take into account the quarter of the total number of births that are to non-residents.

“We’re definitely seeing service impacts – I’ve personally been impacted,” Greene said.

Of the countries that have birthright citizenship, North America is a desirable destination, she said, but this is something the “ultra-rich” only can do.

“It feels really unfair and it doesn’t feel right to shop for your citizenship,” Greene said.

Greene also criticized MLA Jas Johal for praising the U.S. government move to ban pregnant women from getting tourist visas, something Greene called “policing women” by profiling them if they’re pregnant when applying for a tourist visa.

The U.S. State Department put in rules more than a week ago that banned women who were pregnant fromgetting tourist visas to the U.S.

Greene called this a “horrifying violation of human rights.”

She said she wants the letter to reflect that Richmond wants to end a practise where “people essentially buy their citizenship so that we’re never ever in a situation where we’re policing women’s bodies.”

Greene also called for an amendment that talked about changes not affecting vulnerable and stateless people but this didn’t pass.

Coun. Bill McNulty said the accommodation rules need to be revisited, because birth tourist stays don’t fall under short-term rentals, rather the provincially regulated long-term rentals.

“I think there are many loopholes to be closed and I think the city can close some of them within our community,” he said.

This was reiterated by Coun. Harold Steves who suggested long-term rentals for birth tourism are actually turning homes into hotels.

McNulty also suggested sending the letter to all MPs in Canada since it’s a federal issue.

“If you want something to be done at the federal level … I think we have to let everybody know,” he said.

Greene was the only councillor who voted against the motion.

Mendicino did not return repeated requests from the Richmond News for an interview.

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Donald Trump’s latest travel bans are cruel and senseless – and an opportunity for Justin Trudeau

2020/02/06 Leave a comment

Of the African countries included in the ban, immigration to Canada has increased for all of them 2015-19 (till November): Nigeria (4,090 to 11,175), Eritrea (2,210 to 6,555), Sudan (335 to 1,200) and Tanzania (150 to 200). So hard to see Kusmu’s case for “measures to directly increase immigration to Canada from those countries” given that it is already happening.

I am not sure about whether this would actually play a positive role in gaining African support for the Canadian Security Council bid, given that this is essentially a brain drain from Africa to Canada:

Understanding the news that came from the White House on Jan. 31 was an exercise in cognitive dissonance.

Earlier that day, President Donald Trump proclaimed February as National African-American History month. “Through bravery, perseverance, faith and resolve – often in the face of incredible prejudice and hardship – African-Americans have enhanced and advanced every aspect of American life,” he said.

But just a few hours later, his administration announced the latest round of travel bans, which will affect four African countries – Nigeria, Eritrea, Sudan and Tanzania – that contain nearly a quarter of the continent’s entire population (a continent he previously referred to as containing “shithole” countries). The various restrictions – the suspension of visas for people sponsored by family members and, for some, green card (i.e. diversity visa program) applications – go into effect on Feb. 22.

The Trump administration cites national-security concerns for those bans, including potential slips of aging identity-management systems and overall “elevated risk and threat environments”; past White House officials and current legislators have called the bans nonsensical and cruel. Indeed, those issues offer the government thin cover to arbitrarily target potential immigrants, most of whom are free to apply for a temporary visitor visa (which would theoretically nullify any security precautions) but are barred from the labour-intensive process of applying for an immigration visa that often requires years of intense vetting.

So if security seems like an unlikely motive for the administration’s latest move, what is? While there is some speculation it may be a play for diplomatic bargaining chips with those countries, the more probable motivator is Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration base as a presidential election looms. Unlike the 2017 Muslim ban, which garnered widespread condemnation and scrutiny, a craftier approach – targeting mostly African nations under the pretense of national security – has been adopted. (Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan were also included in this round of bans.)

What Mr. Trump and his supporters may not realize (or, more likely, care about) are the economic and moral consequences of this decision. Banning immigration from Nigeria, one of Africa’s fastest-growing and most dynamic economies, would essentially close America off to a demographic that has proven to be some of its most educated and, with it, direct access to what Newsweek named a growing global “economic superpower” – ironically, on the same day the bans were announced.

The graver implication is that this policy will bring ruin to the lives of the more than 12,000 potential immigrants expected to apply next year and the thousands more relatives and loved ones. The fact that families who are awaiting to permanently reunite with their aging parents or their distant partners on American soil will know that this is impossible, at least for now, is heart-wrenching. To make matters worse, Eritrea and Myanmar (where the Rohingya population is under threat of genocide) are experiencing outsize refugee crises, demonstrating yet again the cruelty of this measure.

Countries continue to erect walls against migrants, from the United States to Greece, which recently announced a (widely ridiculed) plan to create a floating barrier to block refugees on boats. Leaders continue to employ racist rhetoric; Mr. Trump, for instance, previously cited concerns that Nigerians visiting the U.S. would never “go back to their huts” in Africa. And this represents an opportunity for Canada and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Canada will likely witness a large increase of immigration applications from the countries affected by Mr. Trump’s ban. As a country, we will be all the better for such waves, particularly since the infusion of new Canadians can help us offset the challenges that come with our increasingly aging population. And so Mr. Trudeau can counter Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and policies by announcing measures to directly increase immigration to Canada from those countries. If nothing else, it could serve as a last-minute rallying point to bolster his government’s campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, especially as he embarks on an outreach tour of Africa this month.

But perhaps, more poignantly, this move could serve as a much-needed act of atonement to Canadians of African descent, for whom the memories of Mr. Trudeau’s blackface scandal from the 2019 federal election campaign are still fresh. Just as Mr. Trump’s Black History Month actions were telling about his government’s approach, there might be few better ways for Mr. Trudeau to signal his support of Black History Month in Canada this year.

Source: Donald Trump’s latest travel bans are cruel and senseless – and an opportunity for Justin Trudeau: Petros Kusmu

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