Roger Scruton’s brand of conservatism became a licence for bigotry

2020/01/18 Leave a comment

Among all the eulogies, this dissenting voice:

Since Roger Scruton’s death on Sunday, virtually the entire Conservative establishment has united in eulogising him. The prime minister hailed him as “the greatest modern conservative thinker”; Daniel Hannan called him “the greatest conservative of our age”. But when it comes to politics, Scruton’s greatest contribution has been to help make a modernised version of Enoch Powell’s bigotry – the idea that it is impossible for immigrants to integrate successfully – part of the mainstream debate.

Writing in Powell’s defence, Scruton once attacked liberal politicians for believing “the proposition that pious Muslims from the hinterlands of Asia would produce children loyal to a secular European state”. He was clear that just being born and brought up here didn’t make someone “one of us”; indeed, for certain ethnic and religious categories, the very idea was laughable. His view that Christianity was an essential component of English identity, and that of other European countries, meant that Muslim immigrants could only be seen as a threat.

So Scruton’s “conservative” conception of national identity, much praised over the last week, was not just about his love of foxhunting or the countryside. It was explicitly exclusionary. And his views on what that meant for public policy were not confined to architecture, but ranged far wider. He argued that European countries should explicitly discriminate (in jobs, housing or welfare benefits) in favour of “indigenous European communities”, on the grounds that “all coherent societies are based on discrimination”.

Scruton’s thinking has been influential both in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. His focus specifically on the “Muslim threat” predated that of his friend Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, and most other European “national populists”, who have now made it their near-exclusive focus. His continued popularity among British conservatives – and Conservatives – reflects the fact that Islamophobia is respectable, acceptable, and indeed electorally useful, in a way in which anti-black racism or antisemitism, by and large, is not (at least in public).

In this country, Scruton’s most obvious disciple, Douglas Murray, advances a version of the “great replacement” thesis – which was the inspiration for the Christchurch massacre – that Europe is being overrun by Muslims, encouraged by deluded or malign liberal policymakers. Murray’s bestselling book, The Strange Death of Europe, has been lauded by Orbán and other leaders of the European far right. Meanwhile, Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at Birkbeck, takes a more moderate tone. But he implicitly echoes Scruton in arguing that we should prioritise the “ethnic self-interest” of the “white majority” by explicitly introducing racial and religious preferencesinto immigration policy.

So what does Scruton’s continued influence mean for British politics and policy? There are certainly those on the right who embrace the connection between his views on national identity and the success of national populists elsewhere in Europe, and would like to see policies to match. Last month, the influential Conservative thinker, Scruton admirer and, until recently, Downing Street “social justice adviser” Tim Montgomerie endorsed Hungary’s exploration of “the limits of liberalism”. This includes, presumably, Orbán’s expulsion of the Central European University, the political subservience of the judiciary, and his muzzling of NGOs who don’t toe the government line.

But there have long been tensions between Scruton’s brand of social conservatism and the liberal, free-market approach that has dominated economic thinking on the right since Thatcher – and these will, if anything, be exacerbated by Brexit. Take immigration. Scruton would have hated Boris Johnson’s policy of a non-discriminatory, Australian-style, points-based immigration system. The idea that immigration policy should prioritise the “skills we need” would have been anathema to him – both because of the priority it gives to economics over culture, and because it will probably increase the number of Asian immigrants at the expense of Europeans.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

As 2020 Olympics Approach, Japan’s Treating Foreign Workers Like Indentured Labor

2020/01/18 Leave a comment

Frightening comparable to  Qatar with the 2022 FIFA World Cup and other Gulf states where passports and other documentation are held by employers:

As Japan ages and the population declines it needs foreign workers more than ever, but it’s unlikely to get them when employers can snatch your passport and keep it, even after you quit—leaving you in legal limbo.It all seems like something that you’d expect to happen in a dodgy part of the Middle East, but nope, it’s happening in the Land of Omotenashi, where everyone is putting on a friendly face with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics on the horizon.

Foreign tourists with money are very welcome. Foreign laborers? Not so much. Yet they are needed. The Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) union published a report last year, The Dark Side of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, claiming that laborers—many of them foreign—already are being overworked and exposed to dangerous conditions. There simply aren’t enough Japanese to do the jobs that need to be done.

Even if all the sporting venues, new hotels, and housing for the Olympics are completed in time for the start of the games in July, staffing those facilities adequately may be a colossal challenge.

There’s even concern there won’t be enough security staff to police the venues, and the Japanese government is considering asking Japan’s Self Defense Forces to do the job. But soldiers can’t take up the slack elsewhere.

Japan’s Cabinet Office announced last year that the nation has a shortage of about 1.2 million workers, primarily in the construction, agriculture, fishing and hotel industries. Teikoku Data Bank lists 10 major industries in Japan that already are short on labor, not only in construction, but in the automobile industry and information technology.

Perhaps that is why Japan is willing to look the other way when laws get bent, as long as empty workbenches are filled. But Japan’s rep among potential recruits is such that many are discouraged from coming here. The abuse of foreign workers often occurs within the antiquated laws of this country, and the Japanese government seems to have no interest in solving the problem.

BRENDA’S STORY

On Thursday, a Filipino woman, with the financial aid and support of the independent nonprofit called POSSE, which supports labor issues here, sued her employer in the Yokohama District Court. She is requesting the return of her confiscated passport and her graduation certificate, as well as financial compensation. Without her passport, she cannot find a new job or leave the country. Her employer, ironically, is an Immigration Law Firm in Yokohama.

According to the lawsuit and her lawyers, “Brenda”—who has asked us not to use her name, lest she be branded a troublemaker when she seeks future employment—arrived in Japan in 2017. After finishing Japanese language school, she began working for the law office in Yokohama in April of 2019.

“If I give you your documents, you’ll run away.”
— Brenda’s Japanese employer

Brenda was asked to give her employer the documents necessary to process her visa paperwork, and she signed a contract that allowed her boss to “manage” these materials. She did interpreting, translating Tagalog into English, and other secretarial work for the firm. However, when she was paid after the first month she discovered her entire salary was under 100,000 yen (about $900), well below the cost of living. That was half of what she had been promised. She tried to quit the firm, but her boss refused to give her back her papers, saying, “If I give you your documents, you’ll run away.”

Eventually, in early July she did resign, but the firm still refused to give her back her passport. She went to POSSE, which is known for helping young workers, students and foreign laborers.

Makoto Iwahashi, a staff member there, says that when they went to the law office with Brenda to talk to her employer, he refused to cooperate and yelled at them to leave.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” says Iwahashi. “In order to make non-Japanese work long hours for very little pay without quitting, a number of companies confiscate their employees’ passports.” Many foreign workers complain about poor conditions, wage arrears, workplace injuries, and unfair dismissal, he said, but regulations to protect the rights of foreign workers are far behind where they need to be.”

“This is, after all, a country where Karoshi (death by overwork) is a word everybody knows.”
— Shoichi Ibusuki, labor rights lawyer

“Many workers speak little Japanese,” says Iwahashi, which is a major handicap. “They are afraid to speak up or report the harsh conditions.”

Iwahashi notes that in many countries withholding an employee’s passport is against the law. The Immigration Bureau of Japan says there is nothing illegal about an employer keeping the passport of a foreign worker who is not under the technical trainee program. The Labor Ministry of Japan has issued guidelines discouraging employers from holding onto passports, but there are no penalties for violators.

If Japan wants to attract the large number of workers it needs, says Iwahashi, it’s going to have to do a better job protecting their rights.

Brenda told The Daily Beast, “I had heard stories about foreign workers being treated badly in Japan, but I never expected it from an Immigration Law Office. I guess because they know the law, they know they can get away with it.” She said she feels like an untethered kite in the wind, unable to find work because now she doesn’t have the necessary paperwork to apply for a job, and unable to leave Japan because she does not yet have a new passport, or her old one back.

Still, Brenda is a little lucky. POSSE is paying for the lawsuit and soliciting funds for the court case, which may take up to two years. “Even if the embassy reissues my passport, I’m going to fight this. I will stay and I will work and I will fight. I’m surely not the first foreigner in Japan to suffer this treatment, but I would like to be the last one.”

Brenda’s former employer, the Yokohama legal firm, has not yet responded to requests for comment, despite phone calls, letters, and emails.

Shoichi Ibusuki, the noted labor rights lawyer representing Brenda, says that it’s very rare to sue for the return of a passport in Japan. Most employers would simply return the passport rather than go to court. “But then again very few foreigners would ever be able to take their employers to court in the first place.”

The road to restitution and fair treatment for foreign workers is long and hard; the odds of winning are not on their side.

CHICKENS AND EGGS

“In 2015, I was able to gain back wages from one surly employer of a foreign agricultural worker,” says Ibusuki, “but I had to get a court order to seize 1,000 chickens and their eggs, in lieu of compensation.”

At that point the recalcitrant employer chickened out, as it were, and paid up what he owed—after what had been more than a court battle of more than two years.

Partly for cultural reasons, Japan has never been a model nation when it comes to labor laws and worker protections. This is, after all, a country where Karoshi (death by overwork) is a word everybody knows. Japan’s working hours are some of the longest in the world, according to the International Labor Organization, despite numerous attempts at reform.

It may be a lot to expect a country notoriously unfriendly to labor conditions with its own people to integrate foreign labor successfully, and the history is not encouraging.

In the old days, Japan solved labor shortages in part by conquering Korea or parts of China and integrating them into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. This doesn’t work so well anymore, but the archaic labor laws have not advanced far from this “golden era” when labor was synomous with slavery.

Modern-day servitude in Japan is more subtle, and a prime example of how it works is the Technical Intern Training Program. It started in 1993 and has come under fire repeatedly  as a breeding ground for the exploitation of foreign labor.

“The ultimate virtue of a Japanese worker: endure silently and work long, long, long hours for low pay.”
— Yoshihisa Saito, an associate professor at Kobe University

The Japan Times in an editorial, “Overhaul Foreign Trainee Program”, bluntly stated that a large number of trainees “are in fact used as cheap labor under abusive conditions.”

“Japanese labor laws are deeply flawed and outdated, unfit to protect Japanese workers, much less foreign workers,” says Yoshihisa Saito, an associate professor at Kobe University Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies. He notes that while there appears to have been progress made in integrating foreigners into the workplace, most of these advances are merely cosmetic. Saito emphasizes, “There are a multitude of legal ways that a Japanese company can keep a non-Japanese employee in servitude, other than simply taking their passport.”

In the end, Saito points out, the Japanese system for recruiting “is not about measuring skill but measuring endurance. Japanese companies want people who have gone through and completed spartan training programs, who make no complaints, and can build pleasant relationships at their workplace. This is seen as the ultimate virtue of a Japanese worker—endure silently and work long, long, long hours for low pay.”

Japan is a lovely place to visit as a foreign tourist. But currently if you want to work at Hotel Japan as a foreign laborer, you will need to check your human rights and your passport at the front desk.

You can’t change hotels and, to paraphrase The Eagles, while you can check out anytime you like, you may not be able to leave.

Source: As 2020 Olympics Approach, Japan’s Treating Foreign Workers Like Indentured Labor

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

A dangerous discourse prevails that draws on long-standing racist ideas about who deserves citizenship. Better data and a new focus are needed.

2020/01/18 Leave a comment

The latest in response to CBC’s Fifth Estate birth tourism episode with the same issue of conflating issues related to wealthy “birth tourists” and the cottage industry that supports them and those pertaining to other temporary residents, which appears to be the main focus of this and related articles. Working on a piece to unpack this and related data issues:

The phrase “birth tourism” has been used by media and political parties to derogatively describe the circumstances in which noncitizen women come to Canada to give birth; the suspicion is that the women do this so that the children can claim citizenship and thus take advantage of their birth country’s education and health care systems, and eventually the children can sponsor their parents to immigrate. At its 2018 convention, the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) went so far as to pass a nonbinding resolution to refuse automatic birthright citizenship to children born to two nonresident parents, as a solution to the “crisis” of birth tourism. Echoing these sentiments, a recent investigation of birth tourism by the CBC’s Fifth Estate drew three conclusions: Canadian birth tourism is on the rise, it demands a legislative response, and it is a disingenuous pathway to citizenship

All three of The Fifth Estate’s conclusions are flawed, and they have serious implications for those pregnant migrant women who are being labelled birth tourists.

Take the argument that birth tourism is on the rise. Neither the Canada Border Services Agency nor Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada tracks the entry of pregnant nonresidents into the country. Moreover, hospitals are not legally required to inquire about the mother’s nationality, as it is not a prerequisite for a birth certificate. Researchers at the Canadian Institute for Health Information have developed a workaround based on hospital financial data, which include a code for services provided to nonresidents (“other country resident self-pay”). These data show that 3,628 births (1.2 percent of total births) in Canada(not including Quebec) in 2017 were to nonresident mothers. They also show that this number has doubled since 2010 but is geographically focused, primarily in 25 hospitals in Ontario and British Columbia (with comparable numbers in Montreal). But this is only a proxy measure for birth tourism, because it includes international students, migrant workers, those with work visas and foreign government personnel, all of whom could have given birth in Canada, but whose entry into the country was not likely a product of birth tourism.

Nevertheless, the focus on birth tourism has persisted. Parliamentary petitions to refuse birthright citizenship to children born to two nonresident parents were sponsored by Conservative MP Alice Wong in 2012 and in 2018 by Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido. The Fifth Estate segment is the latest in a series of media investigations into the perceived dangers birth tourism presents, not for the pregnant migrant women at the heart of this narrative but for the integrity of Canada’s immigration system and Canadian citizenship at large.

Birth tourism does happen, but the available numbers do not suggest a trend in need of government action — especially action in the form of birthright citizenship refusal. Ministers of both parties reached the conclusion that no measures were necessary: in 2012, it was the Conservative minister of citizenship and immigration, Jason Kenney, and in 2018, the Liberal minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, Ahmed Hussen. The two MPs’ parliamentary petitions failed to gain any legislative traction; provincial legislatures in Ontario and British Columbia also voted against legislative action. Even the CPC opted not to include any mention of birth tourism in its 2019 electoral platform, despite its convention resolution. The continued focus on birth tourism misrepresents the actual urgency of birth tourism, and ultimately this harms nonresident pregnant women by casting them as illegitimate and glossing over the barriers they face with the Canadian immigration system.

Temporary residents often migrate with their families or stay in Canada for prolonged periods — years — and form intimate personal relationships in their Canadian communities.

Discussion of nonresident births must be contextualized within broader immigration trends and the limitations on access to health care. The number of temporary residents arriving in Canada has steadily increased, and many of these people will pursue permanent residency through programs such as the Canadian Experience Class and contribute substantially to the social and economic well-being of their communities and the country.

For nonresidents temporarily residing in Canada, access to public health insurance depends on their immigration category. For example, international students’ access to health coverage in Quebec is limited by nationality; in Ontario and Manitoba it is not available to holders of study permits. For temporary workers, coverage is restricted based on the type or duration of work permit and can require a three-month wait period. Furthermore, people with temporary-resident visas or who are without formal status do not qualify for any medical coverage whatsoever. People enter and live in Canada with temporary resident visas for all kinds of reasons, including to live with their spouse while waiting for their family sponsorship applications to be processed. Temporary residents often migrate with their families or stay in Canada for prolonged periods — years — and form intimate personal relationships in their Canadian communities. The desire to have a family and children is widely considered a natural aspiration that all people should be free to pursue alongside studying and working. While many nonresidents can access public health insurance, access is not universal — a distinction not addressed in the current data. Our research, which is still ongoing, shows that when nonresident women without insurance arrive at a hospital or clinic seeking perinatal care, they are often assumed to be “birth tourists” and treated as if they are unfairly taking advantage of Canada’s health care and immigration systems.

While technically legal, birth tourism is presented as a way to jump the immigration queue by utilizing a disingenuous pathway to Canadian citizenship, and ultimately taking away resources from more “deserving” and “committed” Canadian citizens. MP Wong spoke in favour of the nonbinding convention resolution, saying that “passport babies” take away resources from Canada’s system and that Canada should “fight for our own babies.” This framing of so-called birth tourists and their children as system cheaters is part of a larger trend of criminalizing migrants using the language of deservedness, desirability and illegality to pit “undeserving” migrants against the generosity of Canadians. To this end, birth tourists and their children are marked as less desirable because they are using what is thought of as an improper — albeit legal — channel to obtain Canadian citizenship.

Claims of deservedness suggest that citizens must have an ongoing commitment and obligation to Canada, and children being born as a result of birth tourism are said to disrupt this because there is no way for them to actively demonstrate a clear connection to their acquired status once they’re adults. This, however, is not the defining feature of birthright citizenship: Canadian-born citizens do not actively commit to their status. Moreover, political scientists Rita Dhamoon and Sunera Thobani, among others, conclude that Canadian-born citizens — specifically white Canadian-born citizens — rarely undergo ongoing evaluations of their commitment to the Canadian state. How, then, do we reconcile this double standard where Canadian children born to nonresident parents are held to different, and arguably unrealistic, expectations around citizenship than those born to resident parents? The unspoken accusation here is that “undesirable” migrants are using a legal channel to claim Canadian citizenship.

The result is that nonresident pregnant women are framed as potential perpetrators of migration or citizenship fraud. While available data do not distinguish between racialized and nonracialized mothers, most media and political analysis focuses on racialized birth mothers. This echoes the historical treatment of nonwhite and non-European immigrants as a security concern. For example, Canada’s heavily racialized temporary foreign worker programs have largely restricted family migration and permanent settlement, and there has been increased scrutiny of our family sponsorship program as officials look for marriage fraud. It is important to also consider how this narrative draws on broader problematic perceptions of racialized (and other marginalized) women as not making “ethical” reproductive decisions: for example, choosing to have children to procure state resources for themselves. Considering that the evidence does not support the broad claim that birth tourism is an imminent threat to the country, we question whether it is an issue in need of a legislative response or simply a dog whistle that calls back long-standing sexist and racist immigration legacies that perpetuate the criminalization and surveillance of racialized pregnant nonresident women.

More research needs to be done on birth tourism. Rather than furthering narratives that demonize and criminalize nonresident mothers as birth tourists, we need to shift the focus to how these women’s experiences are eclipsed as a result of this dangerous discourse. Marking these women as queue jumpers and citizenship fraudsters ignores the real-life obstacles they encounter within the health care system and the Canadian immigration system. In our research, we find that these women face challenges accessing perinatal care, building trusted relationships in health care settings and having their voices heard. They pay high hospital and doctor fees, resulting in situations where they forgo necessary care at their own personal risk. It is this crisis rather than the perceived crisis of birth tourism that is in need of further legislative attention.

Source: Birth tourism and the demonizing of pregnant migrant women                                                                

Filed under Birth Tourism, Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with ,

ICYMI: Montreal aims to break down barriers for immigrants in the workplace

2020/01/17 Leave a comment

Once again, contrast between Montreal and the regions:

Mayor Valérie Plante stood in front of 10 red doors inscribed with messages like: “Let’s open doors to employment for them,” “We hold all the keys” and “We can all play a role.”

The life-size doors on display at Complexe Desjardins aim to illustrate the barriers that still face immigrants in the job market and to urge employers to hire them.

“Sixty per cent of immigrants arriving in Quebec choose to settle in Montreal but unfortunately, even today, the doors to employment are still mostly shut rather than open for immigrants,” said Plante, as she launched a month-long public awareness campaign with Shahir Guindi, national co-chair of the Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt law firm and chair of the board of the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal.

While unemployment is at a historic low of five per cent, it is much higher among newcomers, despite the fact that 40 per cent of immigrants are university educated and 10 per cent hold graduate degrees, Plante said.

Montreal ranks fifth among the North American metropolitan regions that attract the most immigrants, according to Canadian and U.S. immigration numbers. However, it lags behind other Canadian cities in helping them integrate and find jobs.

The unemployment rate among newcomers to Montreal was 9.8 per cent in 2016, compared with 5.9 per cent for residents who were born in Canada, according to the Canadian Index for Measuring Integration (CIMI), coordinated by the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS).

More than 22 per cent of immigrants in Montreal live below the poverty line, compared with 12 per cent of Canadian-born citizens, it shows.

Overall, the city ranks 30th out of 35 among Canadian cities for immigrants’ economic performance compared to the rest of the population, according to CIMI.

Plante said she met with about 50 business leaders and officials with the provincial immigration department last year to chart a strategy to improve outcomes for newcomers.

The awareness campaign has support from 18 executives at the National Bank, Métro, Deloitte Canada, Mouvement Desjardins, as well as public or non-profit organizations like the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), Centraide and the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Its French-only website encourages employers to favour diversity in their workforces by making it a company value and requiring managers to implement inclusive policies. It also calls on average Montrealers in the workforce to become aware of their own prejudices and to reach out to immigrants in their work and social circles by sharing contacts and helping them with their CVs.

However, ACS president Jack Jedwab said that while the initiative was praiseworthy, it did not address the negative message the Quebec government has sent by reducing the number of immigrants to Montreal by 24 per cent in 2019 over the previous year.

“We should do what we need to do to encourage and help people to improve their skills, so that they are in line with the needs of the economy,” he said.

“But the bigger messaging from the government isn’t as positive,” Jedwab noted.

The Coalition Avenir Québec government’s rationale for slashing immigration despite the current labour shortage was that newcomers are not integrating sufficiently into Quebec society, he said.

“You are sending a message that suggests that there is a problem out there,” he said.

Greater Montreal received 28,900 immigrants in the first 10 months of 2019, the last period for which numbers are available, compared to 38,315 for the corresponding period in 2018, Jedwab said.

The city received a total of 43,795 newcomers in 2018 and 44,725 in 2017, he said.

In 2019, Vancouver surpassed Montreal for the first time as a destination for newcomers, with 34,095 immigrants from January to October 2019. It received 35,265 immigrants in 2018 and 29,830 immigrants in 2017.

Toronto received 102,965 immigrants in the first 10 months of 2019. The number of newcomers was 106,460 in 2018 and 86,580 in 2017.

“Toronto is reaping a lot of the benefits of immigration in terms of its economy,” Jedwab said, noting that immigration “is the single source of growth for our population.”

In Toronto, the unemployment rate among immigrants in 2016 was 7.5 per cent, compared with 7.7 per cent among the Canadian-born population. However, immigrants in Toronto had higher rates of poverty than the native-born population, with 19 per cent of newcomers living below the poverty line compared with 11 per cent of people born in Canada.

Source: Montreal aims to break down barriers for immigrants in the workplace

Filed under Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Portugal’s socialist government celebrates rising immigration numbers

2020/01/17 Leave a comment

More a country of emigrants which may explain some of the support for immigration:

Portugal‘s government is celebrating rising immigration numbers after the number of foreign nationals living in the country hit half a million for the first time in its history.

The socialist-led government said Portugal had “overcome” barriers to attracting more migrants, who it says are needed due to the country’s relatively low birth-date and ageing population.

“Preliminary data prompt me to say that in 2019, for the first time in our history, the barrier of half a million foreign citizens residing in Portugal has been overcome,” interior minister Eduardo Cabrita told the country’s parliament on Wednesday.

The minister told MPs there were 580,000 foreign nationals were living in Portugal at the end of 2019, up from 490,000 at the end of 2018.

The debate in Portugal over migration contrasts with that in other EU countries, notably the UK – where the government has been aiming to reduce immigration.

Portugal is one of ten EU states where fewer than five per cent of residents are foreign-born; between 2011 and 2016 it also suffered strong emigration due to the fallout from the global financial crisis and austerity.

In 2017 prime minister António Costa’s government passed new laws to boost immigration, with the legislation taking effect in the autumn of 2018.

“We need more immigration and we won’t tolerate any xenophobic rhetoric,” Mr Costa said at the time.

The changes made it easier to come to Portugal for seasonal work, casual work, and study; while the process for regularising undocumented migrants was also modernised. Visas and other bureaucracy were also streamlined.

Notably the Portuguese government has also promised a 50 per cent income tax cut until 2023 to tempt back Portuguese emigrants who have left the country for at least three years.

Portugal’s Socialist Party leads a minority administration that governs with ad hoc support from communists and the radical left.

His party was re-elected in 2019 with a higher percentage of the vote than in 2015 and 22 more seats.

Source: Portugal’s socialist government celebrates rising immigration numbers

Filed under Immigration Tagged with

Douglas Todd: We can stop typecasting Catholics and Sikhs — now the election is over

2020/01/17 Leave a comment

While Todd’s points, of course, about religious believers not being monolithic, Scheer was likely more hampered by his inability to articulate credibly his beliefs and how they would not impact his decisions should he become PM, not to mention his other credibility issues (insurance agent claims, dual citizenship etc).

Moreover, Canadian public opinion has shifted as Todd notes and leaders need to be attuned to that reality:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau regretted in the fall that “divisiveness and disinformation were all too present features of this past election campaign,” in which he acknowledged he had become a polarizing figure.

What the Liberal party leader didn’t quite admit, however, is he played an oversized role in turning the October 2019 election, in which his party was reduced to a minority, into a toxic battle about, of all things, religion and sexual ethics.

Who would have thought it would come to this in multicultural, multi-faith Canada? We like to think it is only other countries, like the rivalrous U.S. or India, that are torn apart by religion-fuelled conflict.

But we had our own culture war in Canada in part because of the way Trudeau, and to some extent NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, hammered Conservative party Leader Andrew Scheer and even Green party Leader Elizabeth May, over two wedge issues with ties to religion — abortion and same-sex relationships.

These two ethical concerns were torqued so hard that most of the electorate likely lost track of any real sense of what Canadian Catholics and Sikhs actually believe about abortion and LGBTQ issues. The public might be surprised.

The Angus Reid Institute found Scheer, an active Catholic, suffered the most as a result of his religion. Commentators say it’s a key reason he announced last month he would step down as Conservative leader.

More than 51 per cent of Canadians told pollsters they developed a negative attitude to Scheer based on what they heard about his Catholicism and his beliefs.

A smaller proportion, 36 per cent, leaned negative about the religion of Trudeau, who says he is Catholic. Voters’ pessimism declined to 31 per cent for May, an Anglican who wears a small cross on a necklace, and to just 24 per cent for Singh, an orthodox Sikh who wears a turban and carries a ceremonial dagger.

Faith clearly remains combustible in Canada. Even though two of three Canadians believe having “freedom of religion” makes this a better country, more than one in five admitted they feel deeply “repelled” when a political candidate is a person of faith.

Scheer’s political opponents didn’t want voters to forget he is personally “pro life” on abortion. That lead to Scheer often saying “as leader of this party it is my responsibility to ensure we do not reopen this debate.”

Nor did Liberal or NDP campaigners want anyone to overlook that Scheer doesn’t attend Pride Parades. To which Scheer’s typical defence was, “I find the notion that one’s race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation would make anyone in any way superior or inferior to anybody else absolutely repugnant.”

But Scheer’s commitments to non-prejudicial behaviour did not assuage a suspicious electorate. Two of three Canadians said they don’t trust politicians to keep their personal views out of the public realm.

It’s possible, however, the public might have felt a bit more trusting of Scheer if they knew most of the country’s 13 million Catholics, many of whom are recent immigrants, are not nearly as uniform or doctrinaire as they are often portrayed.

Even though the Catholic church has long opposed any “direct attack on the fetus,” University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby and Angus Reid reveal in their book, Canada’s Catholics, that 85 per cent of Canadian Catholics approve of abortion when a woman’s life is in danger.

Illustrating striking variance among the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, the book also shows half of Canadian Catholics believe “a woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion for any reason.” That was the same pro-choice stand championed by Trudeau and Singh.

When it comes to same-sex relationships, Catholic authorities continue to formally oppose them, while urging compassion. However, Canada’s Catholics are much like the rest of the laissez-faire population: “Close to two in three approve both of same-sex couples marrying and their adopting children.”

Canada’s 13 million Catholics are hardly doctrinaire on abortion or same-sex marriage. (Source: Canada’s Catholics)

Contradicting the pundits, who said before the election that Singh would provide the strongest test of voters’ tolerance for religious diversity, Angus Reid Institute polls show he was harmed the least because of his religion, in which he often expresses pride.

It’s conceivable many Canadians were, through extroverted, upbeat Singh, getting more exposure than ever to a member of the Sikh faith, which is about 500 years old, rooted in the Punjab region of India, has about 27 million followers and more than 500,000 in Canada (mostly in Greater Toronto and in Metro Vancouver).

But just as Scheer does not come close to representing all of Catholicism, Singh does not represent all Sikhs. Nobody, especially a politician, can embody everything about a faith (and that includes the pope).

Sikh scholars make it clear that followers hold a spectrum of beliefs about abortion and homosexuality, most of which are more conservative than those promoted by the NDP leader.

In Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed, respected University of Michigan professor Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair says the “idealistic” position in the Sikh religion, which teaches reincarnation, is opposition to abortion.

“To terminate a birth through abortion would be tantamount to refusing a soul entry into a particular body and sending it back to the cycle of birth and deaths — a choice that is not ours to make,” says Mandair.

However, the professor says many Sikhs today feel “morally ambiguous” about abortion and are less “hard and fast” about it. Mandair says Sikhism’s ethical bottom line is abortion, though sometimes acceptable, should not be “driven by selfish motives.”

In a similar vein, Mandair points out many Sikh leaders have condemned homosexuality in recent years, leading to most members of the faith believing in a “hetero-normative model of sexuality” that discourages alternative forms of family.

“Such a process of forcing homosexuals to go underground, as it were, has led to a belief among many Sikhs that there are no homosexual Sikhs,” says Mandair. Despite it, the professor maintains the primary source of Sikh ethics, the Guru Granth Sahib, does not justify castigating homosexuality.

All of which should help demonstrate that followers of religions are not monolithic. So we can always hope next time an election comes along more voters will have a bit better understanding of people of faith.

In that way perhaps fewer politicians will try to twist religion-linked concerns into dangerous wedge issues.

Source: Douglas Todd: We can stop typecasting Catholics and Sikhs — now the election is over

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , ,

The Minority-Majority Shift. Two Decades That Will Change America. For Sports Marketing, It’s Game On.

2020/01/17 Leave a comment

The sports perspective (Punjabi enthusiasm for hockey appears to the the exception – Indian Immigrants Are Saving Canadian Hockey):

For this analysis, I used data from Simmons, looking at the sports preferences of consumers under 25 years old, broken down by ethnicity (non-Hispanic White, Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian American respondents).

One of the reasons why I decided to start this series of articles with sports is because of the importance that sports marketing has as a brand/business-building tool for brands to connect with consumers, as well as the fact that sports have significant power to shape a society’s culture.

When it comes to the relationship between sports preference and demographics in America, the picture is mixed. While there are some noticeable differences in preferences by different ethnic groups, there are also commonalities. These differences and commonalities will be felt in the next decades, since the impact of the choices demonstrated by minority consumers will increase exponentially, mainly from Hispanic and Asian-American consumers, given their fast population growth. In contrast, the influence of non-Hispanic White consumers may be reduced over time.

It’s a Soccer World

Soccer has significant growth potential in the years ahead. Already the favorite among Hispanic-Americans, soccer has a robust preference among Asian-American fans as well, and it has been growing amongst non-Hispanic White fans too.

One challenge facing soccer is that differently from the major sports leagues in America, their fans are spread among different franchises, including MLS, Mexican Futbol League and, growing in popularity, the European National leagues (mainly the ones from England, Spain, Italy, and Germany) as well as Europe’s Champions League, making it harder to reach the whole spectrum of soccer fans with one sponsorship program, but also offers a diverse set of options for marketers to align with.

I spoke with one of the authorities when it comes to sports marketing, Ricardo Fort, Coke’s Head of Global Sponsorships, who is directly involved with the trends and opportunities when it comes to sports marketing. Below is his take on the growth of soccer in America:

“As the profile of an American fan becomes more international, particularly Hispanic, soccer is likely to be the biggest winner. Thanks to the growth of the MLS, the increasing availability of international soccer content in open TV and, mostly, the incredible global success of the women’s national team, new generations of fans will be as familiar with the Mbapes, and Alex Morgans as their grandparents were with the Joe Montanas and their parents are with the Tom Bradys.”

The Three Major Leagues

America’s favorite sports leagues: NFL, NBA, and MLB face a mixed set of challenges from a demographic standpoint for the decades to come.

  • NFL, America’s favorite sport has an excellent position with African American and Asian American sports fans, and a substantial appeal to Hispanic fans, which explains why we see more outreach efforts from the league like games in Mexico City and increased availability of games broadcast in Spanish.
  • Similarly, the NBA has also been investing in becoming more international, including efforts to connect with Latin American and Asian markets. These efforts, combined with their stronghold among African American sports fans, make the league another strong contender to benefit from the shifts in demographics in the years to come.
  • For MLB, the challenge for the next decades is less about connecting with multicultural fans, but more about how to make a game considered too long by many, played during too long of a season to interest a generation of consumers used to “everything now.”

Weak Spots

On the other side of the spectrum are Nascar and NHL, who significantly under-index in preference among sports fans from minority ethnic backgrounds, with less than a third of the responses when compared to their non-Hispanic White preference levels. If these leagues don’t become more relevant to minority fans, they risk experiencing declines in attendance at their events, in viewership, in broadcasting fees from media partners, and ultimately sponsorship dollars from corporations.

The Idol Factor

Idols are extremely important for building leagues, franchises, and brands, and having icons from the multicultural segment is a great step toward the path of making your brand more relevant with multicultural fans. Still, you don’t need to be from a minority background to connect with minority consumers, as pointed out by Freddy Rolón, ESPN Deportes Vice President and General Manager, based on the Sports Poll data, a study about sports interest in America: “Kobe Bryant was a great example of an athlete that connected with multicultural consumers. He speaks Spanish, has publicly demonstrated his passion for soccer, which is a departure from a U.S. centric type of sports idol we are used to seeing”.

What Won’t Change

In spite of the fast changes we will face during the next decades, according to Rolón, a few things won’t change: “Despite all the future demographic changes, one thing that will stay the same is that there will be very few opportunities for brands to connect with a massive audience of fans like they do during a live sports event. Live sports bring scale because people want to watch sports live. Given the current (and future) media fragmentation environment we live in, expect live sports and news to break through the clutter and that’s key in reaching a wider audience. However, brands should go beyond the game itself; marketers should also focus on the stories behind the game, the players, the stadiums, the eco-system surrounding the games.”

Watch Outs

  1. Almost every sports franchise, either at the league level or individual team level, will need a multicultural strategy for the next decades.
  2. Similar to what we observe from best practices in multicultural advertising, sports franchises should focus on being relevant through authentic culture strategies, rather than depending on language or stereotypical approaches.
  3. Sports franchises need to build a fan base with an approach that starts from grassroots, youth connection, growing vertically towards professional levels, passing through the so crucial high school and college steps.
  4. Either from a video streaming consumption or by the growing relevancy of eSports, multicultural consumers are leading the pack when it comes to the fusion of technology and sports.

One thing is for sure. The impact of multicultural consumers as they relate to the sports scene in the U.S. is bound to make it “a whole different ballgame”. Get ready!

Source: The Minority-Majority Shift. Two Decades That Will Change America. For Sports Marketing, It’s Game On.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Airline Apologizes for Requiring Passenger to Take Pregnancy Test Before Flight

2020/01/17 Leave a comment

Any measures to reduce birth tourism should not be outsourced to an airline rather than government visa or other requirements:

A Hong Kong-based airline has apologized for requiring a passenger to take a pregnancy test before a flight in November to Saipan, a United States territory in the Western Pacific that is a popular destination for so-called birth tourism.

The carrier, Hong Kong Express Airways Limited, said in an emailed statement this week that it had stopped administering pregnancy tests after re-evaluating the contentious practice.

The apology came a little over two months after the passenger, Midori Nishida, blogged about her experience on a Nov. 9 flightfrom Hong Kong International Airport to Saipan, which is in the Northern Mariana Islands.

The commonwealth has become a magnet for expectant Chinese mothers because babies born on the island are eligible for United States citizenship.

“We would like to apologize unreservedly to anyone who has been affected by this,” the airline said in the statement.

Ms. Nishida, 25, a Tokyo resident, was raised on Saipan and was visiting her parents when the episode occurred, she wrote in a blog post on the website of The Saipan Tribune newspaper.

“Despite being a frequent flier to Saipan, none of my previous experience would have prepared me for what happened during my most recent flight: Take a pregnancy test or be denied boarding,” she wrote.

After filling out a mandatory questionnaire from the airline stating that she was not pregnant, Ms. Nishida was selected to undergo a “fit-to-fly” medical assessment and was asked to sign a medical release form, her blog post said.

The form read: “The passenger has been observed to have a body size/shape resembling to a pregnant lady,” according to Ms. Nishida, who said she showed airline employees her return plane ticket, but to no avail.

“I was then led by a female in plainclothes, who claimed to be the medical practitioner, to a public restroom,” she wrote. “I was handed a pregnancy test and when the result came out negative, she failed to record this on the medical form and instructed me to throw the test into the trash. Satisfied that I had no baby in me, the airline staff finally issued me a boarding pass.”

The airline, which Cathay Pacific bought in July, said the pregnancy test requirement arose early last year.

“In response to concerns raised by authorities in Saipan, we took actions on flights to Saipan from February 2019 to help ensure U.S. immigration laws were not being undermined,” the airline said. “Under our new management, we recognize the significant concerns this practice has caused. We have immediately suspended the practice while we review it. We’d like to apologize for the distress caused.”

The United States Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday night.

Ms. Nishida wrote that she was well aware of Saipan’s reputation as a “hot spot” for birth tourism, but that she was appalled by the way the airline had treated her.

“Coming back to Saipan has always been a happy time for me as I look forward to seeing my family and catching up with friends,” she wrote. “But after this incident, I can only think of how I will be suspected, investigated and humiliated before I can return to a place I consider home.”

Source: Airline Apologizes for Requiring Passenger to Take Pregnancy Test Before Flight

Filed under Birth Tourism, Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Netherlands: Media and politicians, get over your pessimism about integration

2020/01/16 Leave a comment

Interesting overview of Dutch debates contrasted with minority group outcomes:

It’s time for the media and politicians to overcome their pessimism about integration, says Leiden professor Leo Lucassen.

Twenty years ago the Netherlands witnessed the rise of Pim Fortuyn. In the wake of his death on May 6 2002, his party Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) scored 26 seats in the elections.

Many were taken completely by surprise by the massive win and the social discontent about immigration and integration that was at the bottom of it. Journalists and commentators, as well as many politicians, were beating themselves up for not having seen it coming.

Yet the groundwork had been laid as early as the 1990s by then VVD parliamentary party leader Frits Bolkestein, Fortuyn’s columns in Elsevier magazine and Paul Scheffer’s article ‘The multicultural tragedy’ in the NRC.

But it was the death of Fortuyn and the explosive rise of the LPF which kicked off the pessimism about integration which is continuing to this day. Driven by guilt for having been too politically correct during the 1980s and 1990s, many a journalist and politician made a complete u-turn.

Central was the idea of a ‘clash of civilisations’, proposed by American political scientist Samuel Huntington and introduced in the Netherlands by Bolkestein among others. It predicted a new conflict between ‘western civilisation’ and Islam in the wake of the implosion of the Soviet Union, and generated a generally pessimistic climate with respect to the integration of Moroccan and Turkish migrants and their children in particular.

Second-generation problems, such as criminality and radicalisation – the murder of Theo van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri, for example – unemployment and school dropout numbers were not only highlighted but also considered as the ultimate proof that the multicultural ideal was a left-wing utopia that has crashed and burned.

The members of a parliamentary commission on integration policy, led by the then VVD MP Stef Blok, which concluded that integration had been a completely or partially successful barely escaped being tarred and feathered. Their findings, it was assumed, simply could not and should not be true.

With hindsight. the commission’s conclusions were right: there were all sorts of problems and disadvantages but all the trends pointed in the right direction.

And now, 15 years later, despite the dominant pessimism about integration, the children of low-skilled labour migrants are continuing to do better, both in education and the jobs market.

In 2016, socio-cultural thinktank SCP found that Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean representation in the crime stats had almost halved since 2006.

A survey by the same think tank published at the end of last year showed that a considerable number of Dutch people, particularly those with a lower level of education and the elderly, are paying scant attention to these facts and continue to think that newcomers are barely integrating.

Over half think that former migrant workers and colonial migrants from Suriname and the Antilles should adopt ‘Dutch cultural traditions’ and distance themselves from their own. Many also think ‘they’ are out to ‘do away with’ ‘our’ traditions, such as blackface Zwarte Piet.

An 80% majority think migrants should, at any rate, adopt ‘Dutch values and norms’. That is not an unreasonable stance, and is certainly valid when it comes to  learning the language, paying tax and abiding by the law but on closer inspection many people take it to means something completely different.

To them ‘Dutch values and norms’ are unique cultural characteristics which, they assume, are new to immigrants and their children. Many of these values are in fact not so uniquely Dutch and many newcomers have similar outlooks. Moreover, many Dutch citizens do not share such lauded ideals of women’s and gay rights, as radical right-wing Tweets and Facebook entries demonstrate every single day.

And lastly, a Dutch person with a migration background is, like any other citizen, perfectly entitled to question certain traditions, such as the blackface Pete.

But as long as people perpetuate the artificial division between ‘them’ and ‘us’ they contribute, perhaps unwittingly, to the exclusion of immigrants. It should not come as a surprise that the children of many immigrants are saying they have done their bit to integrate and that it is now up to the majority to do theirs.

Journalists, commentators and politicians should finally shake off the Fortuyn trauma and stop treating immigrants to this country as a separate category. That would not only recognise the true measure of integration but also contribute to a more pleasant and healthier social climate.

Source: Media and politicians, get over your pessimism about integration

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

USA: Why Hostility to Immigration Runs So Deep

2020/01/16 Leave a comment

Good commentary regarding some of the causes of the hostility of many Americans to immigration, largely based on misperceptions and not the actual evidence, and the contrast with Canadian support based on immigration that favours skilled workers.

Given US discussions of their H1-B visa program (workers for the tech industry), not convinced that this would change anti-immigration discourse much:

Public opinion about immigration is hard to understand. Americans express more favorable views toward immigration since Donald Trump was elected president:

But these poll numbers come with several caveats. First, the surge in support for immigration might simply be a reactionto the xenophobia of the Trump administration and could fade after he leaves office. Second, the polls say little about the salience of the issue to the two sides; opponents of immigration might be more motivated than advocates, and thus fight harder. Finally, it’s worth noting that even now, those who support decreasing immigration outnumber those who back increasing it. And this data is just for the U.S.; other countries may be going in the opposite direction.

Why does the public seem to have an anti-immigration bias? The bulk of the data shows that immigrants, at least in the U.S., are a healthy and positive force. They are highly upwardly mobile. They make outsized contributions to technology and industry. They don’t push down the wages of native-born workers and in the case of high-skilled immigrants they even raise them. They commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. They pay plenty of taxes that help support local and state governments. They revitalize dying small towns and blighted neighborhoods. Why are so many Americans wary of what seems on paper like an unadulterated good?

One possible reason is that Americans, though more positive toward diversity than those in many other countries, also worry that their culture will be diluted by newcomers. Racial prejudice toward immigrants from nonwhite countries plays a role as well. And politics may also be a factor; because children of immigrants tend to vote for the Democrats, Republicans may fear that immigration poses a threat to their electoral strength.

But on top of all this, anti-immigration sentiment may be intertwined with suspicion of the welfare state. People may overestimate the amount of public resources spent on immigrants. And they may be less willing to distribute government benefits to people from other countries.

That’s the upshot of a recent paper by economists Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano and Stefanie Stantcheva. The authors conducted detailed surveys with 24,000 native-born people in six developed Western countries — the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and Italy. What they discovered is a pervasive tangle of misperceptions.

First, native-born people in all the countries surveyed tend to substantially overestimate the number of immigrants. Across the entire demographic and political spectrum, people said that the share of immigrants in their countries was about 10 to 15 percentage points higher than it actually was. They also tended to make mistakes about the people coming in, overestimating the share of Muslim immigrants and underestimating the share of Christian ones (except in France). And they tended to underestimate immigrants’ share of the highly educated workforce. The researchers also found that people tended to assume that immigrants receive more welfare benefits than the native-born.

So many people in rich countries seem to think of immigration much the way it’s depicted on the famous poem on the Statue of Liberty — a tired, hungry, poor huddled mass. Even those who normally support the welfare state might be inclined to curb benefits if their country was faced with such a teeming horde of needy newcomers. That inclination will be even stronger among those who don’t like the idea of the welfare state in the first place, who blame the poor for their poverty, who simply don’t care about foreigners, or who buy into racist stereotypes. In a follow-up paper, Alesina and Stancheva show mathematically how all of these factors combine to reduce support for welfare.

Sure enough, Alesina and his colleagues found that when they ask people questions about immigration before asking them about redistribution (rather than afterward), their support for the welfare state goes down. Unsurprisingly, the effect is stronger among conservatives.

So immigration seems likely to reduce support for redistribution. But advanced countries all have big welfare states and are unlikely to abandon them up any time soon. Instead, it seems likely that many will try to shut the gates to foreigners instead.

Those who know the benefits of immigration will have trouble formulating a response. Information campaigns telling people that immigrants are a net fiscal positive seem unlikely to work (the Alesina study, for example, found that respondents weren’t very interested in learning actual facts after the survey was over). Campaigning against racism and negative stereotypes of the undeserving poor may help, but changing deep-seated attitudes is always an uphill battle.

One approach might be to admit more skilled immigrants. Studies show that educated immigrants contribute much more in tax revenue than they take out; most people instinctively know that engineers or doctors are not likely to claim welfare benefits.

Tilting the immigration system toward skilled workers, as Canada and other countries do, won’t just help keep government coffers flush — it might help preserve broad support for both immigration and the welfare state, even in the face of stubborn public misperceptions.

Source: Why Hostility to Immigration Runs So Deep

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →