An Italian referendum on granting faster citizenship to certain immigrants and seeking to strengthen labor rights failed because of low turnout, after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and leading right-wing political parties urged Italians to boycott the democratic process.
In conceding defeat, Maurizio Landini, the secretary-general of the powerful CGIL trade union federation that helped bring about the referendum, said it still was a “starting point” on important issues that remain “on the table” for Italy. This includes heated debates over how many immigrants should be welcomed to Italy, as the country suffers a demographic crisis with an aging population and one of the lowest birthrates in the world.
As well as asking Italians to vote to liberalize the labor market, the referendum sought to reduce the time it takes to become a naturalized citizen from 10 years to five years. Campaigners for the change said this would help second-generation Italians born in the country to non-European Union citizens. They can spend years, often long into adulthood, battling to get full citizenship rights from the only country they know to be their home.
Italian economists have said the change could also be a useful measure to address the problems resulting from Italy’s aging society and low birthrate — just 12% of the population is younger than 14.
On Sunday and Monday, the two days of referendum voting, turnout was low and thus the referendum was declared void. Partial data from Italy’s Interior Ministry published Sunday showed national turnout of just 22.7%, far below the 50% participation by eligible voters that is required for referendums in Italy to be valid. After polls closed on Monday, the YouTrend polling agency estimated voter participation to have been around 30% of eligible voters. In his concession speech, Landini said it was clear from the results that “there is an obvious crisis of democracy.”
The Court found that Malta’s program established a “transactional procedure” whereby nationality was “essentially granted in exchange for predetermined payments or investments.” This approach was deemed fundamentally incompatible with the concept of citizenship as representing a “special relationship of solidarity and good faith between a Member State and its nationals”.
B. Lack of Genuine Link
The Court emphasized that the scheme lacked provisions for establishing a genuine connection between applicants and Malta. The minimal residency requirements and the ability to expedite naturalization through additional payments undermined any serious claim of a real connection.
C. Violation of EU Principles
By operating such a scheme, Malta was found to have violated the principles of sincere cooperation and mutual trust among EU Member States. The Court stated that the scheme jeopardized the mutual trust necessary for the proper functioning of the EU, particularly concerning the recognition of national decisions on citizenship.
Comparative Perspective: Cyprus’s Experience
Cyprus faced similar scrutiny over its investor citizenship program. In response to EU concerns, Cyprus terminated its scheme in November 2020 and subsequently revoked the citizenships of 39 individuals. This proactive approach allowed Cyprus to align with EU expectations and avoid legal proceedings.
Commentary from AGPLAW
The CJEU’s decision underlines the importance of aligning national citizenship laws with EU principles. Cyprus’ experience demonstrates that while the termination of such programs may have short-term economic implications, it also opens avenues for developing alternative investment strategies that comply with EU law. For instance, Cyprus has since focused on enhancing its residency programs and attracting foreign investment through transparent and lawful means.
Malta now faces a critical juncture. By studying the Cypriot model, Malta can explore compliant avenues to attract foreign investment without compromising the integrity of EU citizenship.
Conclusion
The CJEU’s ruling marks a significant development in EU citizenship law, emphasizing that citizenship cannot be commodified. Member States are reminded of their obligations to uphold the principles of sincere cooperation and mutual trust. As the EU continues to explore the complexities of citizenship and investment, this judgment serves as a precedent for ensuring that the acquisition of citizenship remains a process grounded in genuine connection and adherence to EU values.
Not surprising as applicants are generally pretty savvy at understanding systems and ways to improve their chances:
Ottawa is cracking down on skilled immigration applicants who manipulate the point system to boost their ranking scores for a spot in the increasingly competitive permanent resident draws.
Since 2015, the Immigration Department has used the current system to score and rank skilled immigration candidates based on their age, education, language proficiency, work experience and adaptability. Periodic draws are conducted and candidates with the highest scores in the pool are invited to apply.
There are two scoring grids: for candidates who are single, and for those who have spouses and get points for the partner’s qualifying attributes. To balance out this potential advantage for married candidates, singles can earn more points for the same attributes (education, language proficiency, etc.). The potential maximum is 600 points, whether married or single.
However, married candidates have the option to exclude their spouses in the application and be assessed as if they were single, and benefit from the additional points as an individual applicant. It could bump up their score by up to 40 points and make a difference in the current immigration landscape.
Due to the influx of study and work permit holders after the pandemic ended in 2022, the pool of candidates in the system has grown, and new priorities arose for applicants in occupations experiencing skill shortages to bypass the score ranking system.
That has resulted in higher passing scores and more competition for those who aren’t in a prioritized occupation in areas such as health care, education, STEM and skilled trades.
To outscore others, married applicants have increasingly excluded their spouses in applications and opted to sponsor them later, after they themselves secure permanent residence….
The survey, conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, also found the vast majority of respondents were strongly opposed to Canada becoming the 51st state.
“It’s really the worst collective opinions of the U.S. that we have recorded” in the more than 40 years the institute has been keeping track, said Keith Neuman, a senior associate at the Environics Institute for Survey Research. “By more than a two-to-one margin, Canadians’ opinions are negative rather than positive.”
It’s the result of what some experts call a “visceral reaction” toward Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats.
“The unfavourable feelings are much stronger this time, and much more intense,” said Adam Chapnick, a Canadian foreign policy analyst and professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada.
“It’s being reflected in Canadians not travelling to the United States, not purchasing products that are made in the United States and becoming more serious about making hard decisions domestically to improve our productivity and competitiveness in the world.”
Canadian public perception of the U.S. hits new low
That’s a dramatic shift from last fall, when public sentiment toward the U.S. was divided roughly 50-50.
The closest Canadians have come to a similar unfavourability rating was in 2020, during the tail end of Trump’s first administration. At the time, 63 per cent of Canadians felt unfavourable to the U.S.
“In Trump’s first term, it took several years for Canadian public opinion to deteriorate to the same point,” Neuman noted. “The impact on Canadian public opinion has been much quicker this time … there’s not only the history, but he’s been much more aggressive and assertive with policies much quicker this time around.”
A majority of Conservative voters — 57 per cent — still viewed the U.S. favourably, down six points from last fall. In contrast, more than 80 per cent of Liberal, Bloc Quebecois and NDP voters had an unfavourable opinion of the States.
Overall, 78 per cent of Canadians disapproved of Trump’s handling of the U.S. presidency, a figure that matched 2018. Trump was most popular among Conservative voters, 30 per cent of whom approved of his performance.
Canadians can still recover their positive relationship with the States “if we can turn things around in a reasonable period of time,” Chapnick said, referencing Trump’s tariffs and threats against Canadian sovereignty.
“I think that the long-term positive relationship is quite resilient,” he said. “Geography makes us more resilient. Family ties add to that. I think that, should things get back to some sort of new normal, there should be an ability for us to bounce back to a reasonable degree.”
Large majority of Canadians strongly against becoming the 51st state
Canadians have taken an “elbows up” response to Trump’s threats against Canadian sovereignty, Neuman said.
Eighty-three per cent of respondents said they “strongly disagree” that Canada and the U.S. should unite into one country, while just seven per cent said a merger should happen.
That’s a stronger sentiment than when the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) — the precursor to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — was negotiated in 1986, stoking fears of an economic and cultural merger between the two nations. Back then, just 63 per cent of Canadians were strongly against Canada and the U.S. uniting.
Shortly after the CUSFTA was implemented in the late-1980s, an Environics poll found 30 per cent of Canadians felt it was “very likely” that Canada will remain independent from the U.S. over the next decade. Today, that figure has jumped to 70 per cent.
“That, in some ways, is maybe the most surprising or notable finding,” Neuman said. “It’s not evident that we should be seeing that strong a level of confidence right now, given the uncertainty with tariffs and the uncertainty about Trump … We have not been threatened as a country like this since before we became a country.”
But Chapnick wasn’t surprised, noting that Canadians grew more confident in their nation’s sovereignty after worries of annexation during CUSFTA negotiations didn’t come to pass….
…Dana Wagner, co-founder of TalentLift, a non-profit international recruitment company that matches displaced people with employers, said that with no direction from the federal government both employees and refugees are in limbo. Letting the program just expire would be ”counterproductive and cruel,” she said.
“You can’t turn economic visas on and off like a tap without harming Canadian workplaces. Employers put time and resources into international hiring, and that investment is lost if a visa pathway suddenly ends,” she said.
“People in really tough refugee situations around the world are also investing in their job search with Canadian teams. There’s a number of people waiting on the results of an interview, or working hard to get one, who’d be facing yet another major lost opportunity if Canada ends this program.” …
…In its ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the Sixth Circuit’s test. It held that all plaintiffs approach the law equally, regardless of their group identity, and all plaintiffs have to meet the same legal burdens to win their case. There can be no extra hurdle for members of majority groups.
I wasn’t surprised by the outcome, but I was at least mildly surprised that it was unanimous. And I was definitely surprised by the author of the majority opinion — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the court’s most liberal members.
Jackson’s words were clear. Nondiscrimination law is focused on protecting individuals. Quoting previous Supreme Court cases, Jackson wrote, “Discriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, is precisely and only what Congress has proscribed.” As a consequence, “Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone.”
Crucially, the court didn’t rule that Ames had been discriminated against. Instead, it sent the case back down to the lower court to be decided under the proper, equal standard.
Standing alone, the Ames case is relatively narrow in scope. It only holds that all employment discrimination plaintiffs have to meet the same test. Taken together with the court’s other recent cases, including most notably 2023’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which prohibits race preferences in university admissions, the lesson is plain: Any discrimination rooted in immutable characteristics, such as race, sex or sexual orientation, will automatically be legally suspect, regardless of whether the motivation for discrimination was malign or benign…
Valid call for separate bill with proposed cheeky title:
…It’s a package clearly meant to appease Mr. Trump. But Canada’s immigration problems are not a border security issue the way they are at the U.S. frontier with Mexico.
Other than the anomaly of the Roxham Road crossing, which has been fixed by a renegotiation of the STCA, Canada’s problem has not been a porous border but, rather, the mismanagement of its immigration and refugee system by Mr. Carney’s predecessor.
Lumping in these needed reforms with criminal matters glosses over the Liberals’ failings while doing a disservice to people legitimately fleeing persecution or looking for a new life in Canada.
The government should put the immigration reforms in their own bill. A suggested name would be, “Belatedly Undoing the Incompetence of the Trudeau Government Act.”
Immigration section. Correct assessment regarding stakeholders who will oppose any further restrictions or limits. Fails to acknowledge provincial government complicity however:
…And then there is the other side of the housing crisis: demand. More specifically, immigration. It is now widely accepted that our astronomically high levels of immigration, which ramped up under Trudeau, have played a major role in doubling housing costs in the last 10 years. But even though Carney has signalled that he wants to lower immigration levels to something more sustainable, his promise seems shallow.
Immigration targets outlined in the Liberal platform largely represent a continuation of Trudeau-era levels of immigration. And even if Carney is genuinely dedicated to reducing immigration levels, doing so will require regaining control of a completely broken immigration system, not just commitments on the numbers. There has been recent reporting that the government doesn’t even know how many people are in the country right now.
More significantly, fixing immigration will require taking on powerful stakeholders who benefit from the broken status quo they helped build. Many of our major businesses and the service sector have become addicted to cheap, temporary foreign labour. 1
Canada’s post-secondary institutions, colleges being some of the worst offenders, exploit international students as cash cows who have also become another source of cheap labour. And of course, high immigration levels keep the demand for housing high to maintain our real estate pyramid scheme. Similar to housing, fixing this system requires not only serious structural reforms but also the willingness to take on powerful stakeholders with a lot to lose from any reform….
…A complete ban of a country’s people, or a closure of legal border crossings to significant populations, does the opposite. It inverts the risk equation by reducing the odds of a legal, controlled application succeeding to zero. And therefore the comparative benefit of sneaking in or simply showing up or overstaying rises infinitely. In other words: bans strongly incentivize illegal immigration.
That should be well known to American leaders by this point. Despite the walling-off of the southern border and closure of most forms of legal entry and asylum at its crossings under Mr. Trump in his first term and continuing under Joe Biden, the proportion of irregular entries and dangerous smuggled crossings rose. They were reduced to negligible levels in 2024, mainly through judicious use of limited legal pathways.
The Safe Third Country Agreement has the same effect in Canada: By completely banning entire categories of people from any regular-entry application, however unlikely its success, it creates a powerful incentive structure to make dangerous irregular walks across the border. Therefore, when people seek to flee Mr. Trump’s policies, as they did in his first term, they seek to come through fields, forests and lakes, at great risk.
A restricted, controlled immigration system is good for everyone, including immigrants. But restriction becomes a perverse incentive to illegality, as Mr. Trump keeps failing to learn, if you reduce the target to zero.
Un an et demi après l’avoir annoncé, le gouvernement de François Legault a finalement déposé jeudi un règlement pour exiger une connaissance minimale du français chez les travailleurs temporaires — ce qui pourrait « avoir un impact indirect sur la compétitivité des entreprises au Québec », convient-il.
Le 1er novembre 2023, la ministre caquiste Christine Fréchette, alors à l’Immigration, avait soutenu en conférence de presse qu’elle demanderait aux immigrants participant au Programme des travailleurs étrangers temporaires (PTET) de démontrer au renouvellement de leur permis de travail une maîtrise du français de niveau 4 à l’oral.
À l’époque, la ministre, qui est aujourd’hui responsable du portefeuille de l’Économie, avait décrit ce niveau de connaissance du français comme la capacité à « discuter avec [son] entourage » de « sujets familiers ». Selon les documents officiels du gouvernement, les immigrants qui maîtrisent le niveau 4 à l’oral comprennent « le sens général de conversations brèves liées à des activités ou à des situations courantes ».
Jeudi matin, environ 19 mois plus tard, le projet de règlement du gouvernement Legault a finalement été publié dans la Gazette officielle du Québec. Il impose comme prévu la connaissance du niveau 4 pour les participants au PTET, le programme de travailleurs temporaires géré par Québec.
Une exception est toutefois accordée aux employés du secteur de l’« agriculture primaire ».
Une mesure appliquée à compter de 2028
Même si le règlement doit entrer en vigueur cet automne, l’exigence ne sera toutefois imposée qu’à partir de 2028. Le projet de règlement prévoit des mesures transitoires qui feront en sorte de reporter de trois ans les premières évaluations de la compétence en français. L’actuel ministre de l’Immigration, Jean-François Roberge, s’est inspiré de la durée maximale d’un permis de travail, qui est de 36 mois, pour offrir ce coussin aux travailleurs.
Dans son projet de règlement, le ministre de la Coalition avenir Québec convient que ces « modifications […] pourraient avoir un impact indirect sur la compétitivité des entreprises au Québec ». « Comme les autres provinces canadiennes n’imposent pas d’exigence linguistique aux travailleurs étrangers temporaires, ceux qui voudront, après un séjour de trois ans, occuper des emplois dans les entreprises québécoises auront une exigence de plus à satisfaire », a-t-il indiqué.
« En revanche, une meilleure connaissance du français favoriserait l’intégration en milieu de travail et de vie des travailleurs, contribuant ainsi à pourvoir durablement les postes vacants tout en soutenant l’activité économique au Québec », a ajouté l’élu.
Le gouvernement québécois exige déjà une certaine connaissance du français de la part des immigrants économiques permanents….
A year and a half after announcing it, François Legault’s government finally filed a regulation on Thursday to require a minimum knowledge of French among temporary workers – which could “have an indirect impact on the competitiveness of companies in Quebec,” he agrees.
On November 1, 2023, the Caquist Minister Christine Fréchette, then at Immigration, argued at a press conference that she would ask immigrants participating in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (PTET) to demonstrate a mastery of oral level 4 French at the renewal of their work permit.
At the time, the minister, who is now responsible for the Economy portfolio, described this level of knowledge of French as the ability to “discuss with [her] entourage” “familiar subjects”. According to official government documents, immigrants who master level 4 orally understand “the general meaning of brief conversations related to routine activities or situations”.
Thursday morning, about 19 months later, the Legault government’s draft regulation was finally published in the Official Gazette of Quebec. As expected, it requires knowledge of level 4 for participants in the PTET, the temporary worker program managed by Québec.
However, an exception is granted to employees in the “primary agriculture” sector.
A measure applied from 2028
Even if the by-law is due to come into force this fall, the requirement will not be imposed until 2028. The draft regulation provides for transitional measures that will ensure that the first assessments of French proficiency are postponed by three years. The current Minister of Immigration, Jean-François Roberge, was inspired by the maximum duration of a work permit, which is 36 months, to offer this cushion to workers.
In his draft by-law, the Minister of the Coalition avenir Québec agrees that these “changes […] could have an indirect impact on the competitiveness of companies in Quebec”. “As other Canadian provinces do not impose a language requirement on temporary foreign workers, those who want, after a three-year stay, to occupy jobs in Quebec companies will have one more requirement to meet,” he said.
“On the other hand, a better knowledge of French would promote the integration of workers in the workplace and life, thus helping to permanently fill vacancies while supporting economic activity in Quebec,” added the elected official.
The Quebec government already requires some knowledge of French from permanent economic immigrants….
Multicultural Meanderings 