Immigrants — many highly educated — are changing California for the better

2019/05/20 Leave a comment

Interesting how the debate over whether the US should adopt a “merit-based” system, market forces are already making the shift, with California, as always, being a trend setter:

Distracted by President Trump and his riled resisters, it’s easy to miss the big picture of foreign migration to California.

It’s the old story of not seeing the forest for the trees.

Portrayed in this forest grandeur is a new story in the long history of people uprooting and migrating to California chasing opportunities and dreams.

It is the story of many newly arrived immigrants — especially from Asia — being better educated than U.S.-born citizens.

They’re not starting at the bottom of the work ladder as Chinese laborers did 150 years ago when they risked life and limb to help build the Transcontinental Railroad through the granite Sierra.

True, many Latin Americans are still migrating here to work in the fields and harvest crops — although not nearly enough of them, farmers say — or wash dishes in four-star restaurants. But many of them also are much better educated than their predecessors.

“It’s the old story of immigrants coming to the U.S. and California seeking a better life for themselves and their children,” says Hans Johnson, an immigration and demographics expert at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

“What’s different now is the trend toward immigrants coming into California with high levels of education. The share of those who already have completed college is extremely high. Asian immigrants are the best educated group in California, better than U.S.-born. Immigrants from India are the single best educated group in our state.”

And the increasing education levels of Latin American migrants, Johnson says, “means there are fewer lower-skilled immigrants and a smaller pool of farm workers than there used to be.”

But California’s economy still relies on immigrants with little education, Johnson notes in a PPIC research paper released last week. The report is based on immigration figures through 2017, the latest available.

In 2017, Johnson reports, 32% of working-age California immigrants had not graduated from high school. They primarily worked in the agriculture and hospitality industries.

But that same year, 52% of working-age immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for five years or less had at least bachelor’s degrees — up 30 percentage points since 1990. In contrast, only 37% of U.S.-born Californians were college graduates — up just 10 points since 1990.

And in 2017, 55% of newly arrived immigrants were from Asia, roughly double the number from Latin America, 29%. The majority from Asia had at least a bachelor’s degree — and 80% of immigrants from India did.

Of all California workers with bachelor’s degrees, about 30% were immigrants. The overwhelming majority of college grads working in electronics and product manufacturing were immigrants.

What’s attracting them to California now is not railroad building, gold strikes or even farm harvests, but technology, especially in Silicon Valley and the Los Angeles basin.

“Silicon Valley is drawing in immigrants,” Johnson says.

There are five counties where more than a third of the population comprises immigrants. And the top three are in and around Silicon Valley: Santa Clara, San Francisco and San Mateo. The other two are Alameda, across the bay from Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles.

The influx of college-educated immigrants couldn’t come at a better time. California needs these people to replace U.S.-born, college-educated baby boomers who are rapidly retiring, Johnson says. The U.S. birthrate hasn’t kept up with the retirement pace.

“The number of college grads leaving the labor market is at a record high,” Johnson says. “We’ve never seen in the history of California, or the U.S., such a large and highly educated cohort of people leaving the labor force. We need more highly educated workers in California.”

And many are arriving from foreign countries to fill the void.

There’s much more happening with immigration than border walls, family separations, caravans of refugees from violent Central America and demagogic diatribe.

In his research, Johnson concluded there are almost 11 million immigrants in California, about a quarter of the foreign-born population nationwide. That’s 27% of California’s population, more than double the percentage of foreign-born for the rest of the country.

Only about 14% of immigrants are in California illegally. That’s 1.5 million people, down from 2 million in 2010.

Half of California immigrants are from Latin America; 40% from Asia. The main countries of origin are Mexico (4.1 million), China (969,000), the Philippines (857,000), Vietnam (524,000) and India (507,000).

But since 2010, most immigrants — 56% — have arrived from Asia; 29% from Latin America.

Illegal immigration from Mexico has tailed off and it has little to do with anything Trump has tried. It started early in President Obama’s administration and probably was partly due to his stepped-up deportations. But mainly it was because of a better job market in Mexico.

“Labor opportunities in Mexico have generally been improving,” the researcher says. “Population growth has slowed as birthrates have come way down. The number of new workers has declined dramatically, which translates into fewer people in the labor force.” And that means less competition for jobs.

Birthrates are falling because more women are working, he says. That’s happening in many developed countries, including ours.

Meanwhile, California’s technology hub is attracting a much-needed, highly educated workforce.

The state is changing for the better before our eyes. But probably few of us are noticing.

Source: Immigrants — many highly educated — are changing California for the better

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Australia: Migrant groups hopeful for new dialogue after Fraser Anning’s political demise

2019/05/20 Leave a comment

Some reactions to the Australian election results, beyond the overall result:

With some of Australia’s most divisive politicians unsuccessful in this election, Australia’s Islamic community are hoping it will mean more productive political discussions around race.

Peter Doukas from the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia said his impression is that there has been a change in approach and he hopes the government will seize a new opportunity.

“We believe that this government has now an opportunity to embrace a more diverse agenda,” he told SBS News.

“We don’t want to see a return to the rhetoric that led to the Section 18C debates. We are hopeful that the departure of Fraser Anning and the reduction of Pauline Hanson’s presence in parliament will result in a more open and accepting debate of Australian multiculturalism, so we are looking forward to working with the Government to that effect.”

Bilal Rauf from the Australian National Imams’ Council said it would be important, going forward, the government leads for all of the country and promotes a more inclusive stance.

There’s also a sense of hope for a more rational debate, and narrative and dialogue in parliament with the departure of divisive political figures.

“There’s a sense of relief that some of the voices that have been there in the past that have really exploited an Islamophobic platform, will not be there going forward,” he said.

Mr Doukas has high hopes that progress will be made with the new parliament.

“The departure of the more extreme voices from the last parliament is encouraging. I believe Australians are decent people, and generally we are a multicultural country and a country that is accepting of multiculturalism and we look forward to the debates that will emerge from this parliament.”

But some Chinese leaders say they’re concerned their voices won’t be heard.

“If you look at the rhetoric of the Liberal party and the scare campaigns around immigration, I am myself the daughter of refugees, and for them, they’ve often feel like they’ve been shunned,” Cindy Tan, from the Chinese Australian Forum said.

“Surprise! Anyone was assuming that Labor would win, and here we have the other party, the government, winning with a big margin. It was a surprise,” Surinder Jain, the national vice president of the Hindu Council of Australia said.

Mr Jain says that within the Hindu community there have been mixed reactions to the news.

“Our community has people in both the camps. Most of the new migrants, they go for Labor. But once they’ve bought a house and a mortgage and economics becomes important, they go for Liberals, whereas some stick with their initial loyalties. So we have people in both camps. Some are happy, some are shocked, surprised. Some are elated.”

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s population plan to cut the permanent migration program from 190,000 to 160,000 places per year has Mr Doukas worried.

“Australia’s been built on immigration. Scott Morrison was an immigration minister at one point in his career and he would know as well as anyone else that the value of Australia is in its people and we would encourage the Government to review all policy which reduces our immigration impact as it has an economic impact,” he said.

Mr Jain says that while Australia’s transition to a multicultural community over several decades has been a challenge, he feels that there is a great deal of support for it – both from political parties and from the general public.

“From monoculture to multiculturalism has been a big change in Australia. I have seen over the last forty years how things have improved for us. There’s a very genuine desire in both the parties to make multiculturalism a success and most Australians are behind it.”

Source: Migrant groups hopeful for new dialogue after Fraser Anning’s political demise

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Sunstein: Conformity and the Dangers of Group Polarization

2019/05/20 Leave a comment

How ideological and other bubbles become self-reinforcing and increase polarization, amplified by social media networks:

When people talk to one another, what happens? Do they compromise? Do they move toward moderation? The answer is now clear, and it is not what intuition would suggest: members of deliberating groups typically end up in a more extreme position, consistent with their tendencies before deliberation began. This is the phenomenon known as group polarization. Group polarization is the usual pattern with deliberating groups, having been found in hundreds of studies involving more than a dozen countries, including the United States, France, and Germany. It helps account for many terrible things, including terrorism, stoning, and “mobbing” in all its forms.

It follows that a group of people who think that immigration is a serious problem will, after discussion, think that immigration is a horribly serious problem; that those who approve of an ongoing war effort will, as a result of discussion, become still more enthusiastic about that effort; that people who dislike a nation’s leaders will dislike those leaders quite intensely after talking with one another; and that people who disapprove of the United States, and are suspicious of its intentions, will increase their disapproval and suspicion if they exchange points of view. Indeed, there is specific evidence of the latter phenomenon among citizens of France.

When like-minded people talk with one another, they usually end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before the conversation began. It should be readily apparent that enclaves of people, inclined to rebellion or even violence, might move sharply in that direction as a consequence of internal deliberations. Political extremism is often a product of group polarization.

In the United States, group polarization helped both Barack Obama and Donald Trump to ascend to the presidency. Speaking mostly with one another, Obama supporters and Trump supporters became intensely committed to their candidate. On Facebook and Twitter, we can see group polarization in action every hour, every minute, or every day. As enclaves of like-minded people proliferate online, group polarization becomes inevitable. Sports fans fall prey to group polarization; so do companies deciding whether to launch some new product. It should be easy to see that group polarization is at work on university campuses and in feuds, ethnic and international strife, and war.

One of the characteristic features of feuds is that members of a group embroiled in a feud tend to talk only to one another, fueling and amplifying their outrage, and solidifying their impression of the relevant people and events. Many social movements, both good and bad, become possible through the heightened effects of outrage; consider the civil rights movements of the 1960s (and the contemporary #MeToo movement). Social enclaves are breeding groups for group polarization, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

There is another point, of special importance for purposes of understanding extremism and tribalism: In deliberating groups, those with a minority position often silence themselves or otherwise have disproportionately little weight. The result can be “hidden profiles”—important information that is not shared within the group. Group members often have information but do not discuss it, and the result is to produce bad decisions (or even worse).

Consider a study of serious errors within working groups, both face-to-face and online.1 The purpose of the study was to see how groups might collaborate to make personnel decisions. Résumés for three candidates, applying for a marketing manager position, were placed before the groups. The attributes of the candidates were rigged by the experimenters so that one applicant was clearly the best for the job described. Packets of information were given to subjects, each containing a subset of information from the résumés, so that each group member had only part of the relevant information. The groups consisted of three people, some operating face-to-face, some operating online.

Two results were especially striking. First, group polarization was common, as groups ended up in a more extreme position in the same direction as the original thinking of their members. Second, almost none of the deliberating groups made what was conspicuously the right choice, because they failed to share information in a way that would permit the group to make an objective decision. Members tended to share positive information about the winning candidate and negative information about the losers, while also suppressing negative information about the winner and positive information about the losers. Their statements served to reinforce the movement toward a group consensus rather than to add new and different points or to promote debate.

This finding fits with the more general claim, backed by a lot of evidence, that groups tend to dwell on shared information and to neglect information that is held by few members. It should be unnecessary to emphasize that this tendency can lead to big blunders—in governments, in think tanks, and on the Left and the Right. To understand this particular point, it is helpful to explore the three mechanisms that produce group polarization: information, corroboration, and social comparison.

With respect to information, the simple point is that people usually respond to the arguments made by other people—and the “argument pool,” in any group with some initial disposition in one direction, will inevitably be skewed toward that disposition. A group whose members tend to think that Israel is the real aggressor in the Middle East conflict will tend to hear many arguments to that effect, and relatively few opposing views. It is almost inevitable that the group’s members will have heard some, but not all, of the arguments that emerge from the discussion. Having heard all of what is said, people are likely to move further in the anti-Israel direction. So too with a group whose members tend to oppose immigration: group members will hear a large number of arguments against immigration and a smaller number of arguments on its behalf. If people are listening, they will have a stronger conviction, in line with the same view with which they began, as a result of deliberation. An emphasis on limited argument pools also helps to explain the problem of “hidden profiles” and the greater discussion of shared information during group discussion. It is simply a statistical fact that when more people have a piece of information, there is a greater probability that it will be mentioned. Hidden profiles are a predictable result, to the detriment of the ultimate decision.

With respect to the power of corroboration, the intuition is simple: people who lack confidence, and who are unsure what they should think, tend to moderate their views. It is for this reason that cautious people, not knowing what to do, are likely to choose the midpoint between the relevant extremes. But if other people seem to share your view and corroborate your beliefs, you are likely to become more confident that you are correct—and hence to move in a more extreme direction. You might think that on a scale of one to ten, the likelihood that climate change is occurring is seven—but if most people in your group agree that climate  change is occurring, you might move up to nine.

In a wide variety of experimental contexts, people’s opinions have been shown to become more extreme simply because their view has been corroborated and because they have become confident after learning of the shared views of others. The existence of confirmation from others will strengthen confidence and hence strengthen extremity. It can also make for mobs.

With respect to social comparison, the starting point is that people want to be perceived favorably by other group members, and also to perceive themselves favorably. Their views may, to a greater or lesser extent, be a function of how they want to present themselves. Once people hear what others believe, they adjust their positions in the direction of the dominant position, to hold onto their preserved self-presentation. They may want to signal that they are politically correct, whatever that means in their group. For example, they might want to show that they are not cowardly or cautious, perhaps in an entrepreneurial group that disparages these characteristics, and hence they will frame their position so they do not appear as such by comparison to other group members. And after they hear what other people think, they might find they occupy a somewhat different position, in relation to the group, from what they hoped, and they shift accordingly.

If people believe they are somewhat more opposed to immigration than most people, they might shift a bit after finding themselves in a group of people who are strongly opposed to immigration, to maintain their preferred self-presentation. This phenomenon occurs all the time. People may wish, for example, not to seem too enthusiastic—or too restrained in their enthusiasm—for affirmative action, feminism, or an increase in expenditures on national defense; hence their views shift when they see what other group members think. The result is to press the group’s position toward one or another extreme, and also to induce shifts in individual members.

Note that an emphasis on social comparison gives a new and perhaps better explanation for the existence of hidden profiles and the failure to share certain information within a group. People might emphasize shared views and information, and downplay unusual perspectives and new evidence, simply from a fear of group rejection and a desire for general approval. In political institutions and in companies, there is an unfortunate implication: group members who care about one another’s approval, or who depend on one another for material or nonmaterial benefits, might well suppress highly relevant information.

Group polarization is not a social constant. It can be increased or decreased and even eliminated by certain features of group members or their situation.

First, extremists are especially prone to polarization. It is more probable that they will shift, and it is probable that they will shift more. When they start out at an extreme point and are placed in a group of like-minded people, they are likely to move especially far in the direction with which they started. There is a lesson here about the sources of terrorism and political violence in general. And because there is a link between confidence and extremism, the confidence of particular members also plays an important role; confident people are both more influential (the “confidence heuristic”) and more prone to polarization.

Second, if members of the group think they have a shared identity and a high degree of solidarity, there will be heightened polarization. One reason is that if people feel united by some factor (for example, politics or religious convictions), dissent will be dampened. If individual members tend to perceive one another as friendly, likeable, and similar to them, the size and likelihood of the shift will increase. The existence of affective ties reduces the number of diverse arguments and also intensifies social influences on choice.

One implication is that mistakes are likely to be increased when group members are united mostly through bonds of affection and not through concentration on a particular task; it is in the former case that alternative views will be less likely to find expression. Another implication is that people are less likely to shift if the point of view or direction advocated is being pushed by unlikeable or unfriendly group members. A sense of “group belongingness” affects the extent of polarization. In the same vein, physical spacing tends to reduce polarization; a sense of common fate and intra-group similarity tends to increase it, as does the introduction of a rival “outgroup.”

Over time, group polarization can be fortified because of “exit,” as members leave the group because they reject the direction in which things are heading. If exit is pervasive, the tendency to extremism will be greatly aggravated. The group will end up smaller, but its members will be both more like-minded and more willing to take extreme measures, and that very fact will mean that internal discussions will produce more extremism still. If the strongest loyalists are the only people who stay, the group’s median member will be more extreme, and deliberation will produce increasingly extreme movements.

We live in an era in which groups of people—on the Left, on the Right, in university departments, in religious institutions—often end up in a pitch of rage, seeing fellow members of the human species not as wrong but as enemies. Such groups may even embark on something like George Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate. When that happens, or when people go to extremes, there are many explanations. But group polarization unifies seemingly diverse phenomena. Extremism and mobbing are not so mysterious. On the contrary, they are predicable products of social interactions.

Source: Conformity and the Dangers of Group Polarization

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Ads promote Canada’s benefits to would-be birth tourists

2019/05/18 Leave a comment

More on birth tourism and the related “industry:”

Ads urging women to come to Canada to give birth tout the value of providing their child with Canadian citizenship.

“Go to Canada to vacation and give birth to a child,” says one online ad targeting Mainland Chinese mothers. “U.S. rejected your visa? No problem! In fact, Canada is better!”

Ads tell women that going to Canada for automatic citizenship is a “gift” for their babies since their children will be able to get free education, cheap university tuition and student loans, according to translations provided by Liberal MLA Jas Johal and verified by Postmedia.

Under Canadian law, a child born in this country is entitled to Canadian citizenship.

The ads are being run by brokers offering “one-stop shopping” for women, with offers to put together packages including transportation, housing, meals, contracts, pre- and postnatal medical appointments, shopping and checking in at hospitals. The ads generally do not mention the broker’s fees.

Some of the ads tell women their offspring can sponsor their parents under family reunification plans once they are adults: “You want to retire in Canada, but you don’t meet the requirements?” asks one such online ad. “You can give birth to your child in Canada. When your child turns 18, your child can apply for the parents.”

Ads tout monthly government subsidies, Canadians’ visa-free entry to 200 countries, unemployment benefits, and that “Canadian passports mean immigration to the U.S.,” Johal said.

Others say birth tourism is ideal for people who “care about their children’s education.”

And in a reference to China’s long-standing policy that limits most couples to a single child, some of the ads suggest birth tourism is ideal for “people who would like to have several kids.

Johal, the Richmond-Queensborough MLA, said birth tourism offends a large proportion of his constituents who want the practice banned. And Health Minister Adrian Dix is looking for Ottawa to take a stand on the issue.

Johal said the latest numbers of births by non-residents, reported by Postmedia, are a wake-up call to all levels of government. There was a 24 per cent increase in births by non-resident mothers in B.C., to 837 babies in 2017-18.

“At its core, birth tourism debases the meaning of citizenship,” Johal said. “As a son of immigrants, and an immigrant to this country, let there be no doubt those of us who have come emigrated to Canada by following the rules are the ones who are most offended by this practice.”

Johal finds the content of many of the ads downright offensive: “When you come to this country and strive and sacrifice, you strengthen this country and the value of Canadian citizenship. Allowing affluent foreigners to essentially purchase a passport is not what this country is about.”

In a legislature committee this week, Johal asked Dix about birth tourism. Dix acknowledged his concerns about the growing numbers of foreign women coming to B.C. to have babies.

“I don’t agree with it. I don’t support it,” Dix stated. But it’s an issue, he said, that comes under federal jurisdiction since it’s a citizenship and immigration matter.

“I mean it’s time, if they want to act, that they should act,” he said of the federal Liberals. “Or alternatively, say they don’t want to act.”

Birth tourism is expected to become a federal election issue this fall.

The Conservatives want the law changed so that one parent must either be a landed immigrant or a Canadian citizen before a baby can gain citizenship.

Postmedia asked the federal immigration minister for comment about birth tourism and any possible changes to policies. But a spokeswoman said the federal government can’t “speculate” on that.

Nancy Caron, a spokeswoman for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, said the birth-on-soil policy for citizenship has existed since 1947.

The 2019 federal budget has allocated $51.9 million over five years to improve oversight of immigration advisers, including those who deal with birth tourists. Some of the funds will be used to ensure that they aren’t telling women to misrepresent the purpose of their visitor visas.

Mathieu Genest, press secretary to Ahmed Hussen, minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, said that the Conservatives had once proposed ending the citizenship-on-soil policy but that was “roundly rejected by Canadians.” Now the Conservatives have “backtracked” on their policy, he said.

Source: Ads promote Canada’s benefits to would-be birth tourists

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

Seventy-five Years Later, Hungary Still Hasn’t Come to Terms with its Role in the Holocaust

2019/05/18 Leave a comment

Good long and disturbing read by Anna Porter:

On the 75th anniversary of the extermination of most of Hungary’s Jews—including the Auschwitz deportations, which began in May, 1944—we should also take note of the Hungarian government’s apparent determination to distort the country’s historical record. In some circles, this effort includes even the rehabilitation of Miklós Horthy, the longtime Hungarian Regent who governed Hungary during the Holocaust.

A former admiral and adjutant to the Habsburg Emperor-King, Horthy entered Budapest in dramatic style with his army on November 16, 1919, astride a white horse. His army defeated the ragtag Bolshevik forces that had imposed 133 days of “Red Terror” upon the country, but also inflicted its own “White Terror,” in some ways more brutal than its communist predecessor. Early during Horthy’s rule, Hungary enacted some of Europe’s first 20th-century anti-Jewish laws. Jews were capped at 6% of university admissions, and subsequent measures limited Jewish participation in elite professions to the same benchmark.

Jews also were prohibited from working in the public service and judiciary, or as high school teachers. During World War II, an additional law was passed prohibiting marriage or sex between Christians and Jews, on the grounds that such unions were harmful to the “national soul.”

Horthy arrives in Budapest, 1919

Even before Hungary actively rallied to the German war effort, most of Hungary’s young Jewish men had been dispatched to so-called labour battalions, serving unarmed near the front, where they were as likely to be killed by their commandants as by enemy fire. In 1941, the Hungarian army rounded up about 17,000 Jews who couldn’t prove they were citizens, and dumped them across the border into Ukraine, where they were systematically massacred by German death squads. By 1942, labour service had been extended to all Jewish men under the age of 45. All this happened while Horthy—an “exceptional statesman,” according to current Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—ran the country.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s participation in the invasion of the USSR led to the extermination of the flower of Hungarian youth. At the 1942 battle of Voronezh and subsequent operations, the underequipped Hungarian 2nd Army was practically wiped out as it launched itself against Russian defences in support of the ultimately disastrous German thrust toward Stalingrad. By late 1944, Russian troops got to the outskirts of Budapest, which suffered through a 50-day siege before Axis forces surrendered on February 13, 1945. Almost 40,000 civilians died during this period, and much of the city was destroyed.

By this time, most of the country’s Jews already had been deported to concentration camps. In all, an estimated 565,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Historical documents show that even some Germans were amazed by the speed and efficiency of the Hungarian government’s co-operation, and by the cruelty of its gendarmerie.

Horthy and Hitler, in 1938

Some of the few elderly Hungarian Jews who survived in the Budapest ghetto can still remember scenes of rats feasting on the unburied dead in Klauzal Square, and the trigger-happy young men guarding the gates. I have spoken to many survivors, including Max Eisen, a Canadian Holocaust educator, who was a young teenager when his family was rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. He still remembers the terror of being crammed into a boxcar, standing-room only, a hundred to a car, with no water, food or sunlight. To this day, Eisen has nightmares about his mother holding his nine-month-old sister during that three-day journey. Most of his family was murdered mere hours after arriving on the platform at Birkenau. His father’s last words to him were: “If you survive, you must tell the world what happened”—which is what Eisen did with his devastating 2016 book, By Chance Alone.

But Horthy, who survived the war and lived till 1957, had different memories to relate. In his Memoirs, he pompously declared of the mid-1930s that “though times had changed considerably since I had been aide-de-camp to His Majesty Emperor Francis Joseph, my concepts of honour, law and justice…had not altered.” Of meeting Hitler in 1936, he wrote: “It was not my task to stand in judgment upon the man who, since he had come to power, had shown nothing but goodwill towards Hungary, and who had sent me an extremely friendly telegram on the 15th anniversary of my entry into Budapest. I decided, therefore, to avail myself of an Austrian invitation to a chamois [goat-antelope] shoot in August, 1936, to seize the opportunity of paying a personal visit to Herr Hitler. The Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg had offered me the choice between three hunting preserves; I chose Hinterriss, which is famous for its chamois and to which Bavaria affords the only access.”

In concrete terms, the German “goodwill” consisted of allowing Hungary to reclaim parts of historical territories it had lost after throwing in with the losing side in World War I. Horthy’s primary concern was to restore Hungary’s former borders, even if that meant joining the Nazi war effort. As such, his strong nationalism has a certain appeal to modern populists such as Orbán.

In his Memoirs, Horthy uses terms such as “regrettable excesses” to describe massacres of Jews. He claims that he told Hitler, in early 1944, that “a violent solution [to Hungarian Jews] would be contrary to humanity and morals would not only undermine law and order but would have a deleterious effect on production.” He also claimed that in mid-1944—after he had been marginalized by the Germans, who by now were taking direct control of the country—that he did what he could to save the Jews who remained.

On October 15, 1944, Horthy announced over the radio that he had decided to sign a separate peace treaty with the Allies and withdraw Hungary from the conflict. He talked of the grave injustices inflicted by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which had set the fate of Hungary following the First World War. He blamed everyone except himself for the tragedies that had unfolded. His one passing reference to the slaughter of his nation’s Jews was contained in this sentence: “In the shelter of German occupation, the Gestapo tackled the Jewish question in a manner incompatible with the demands of humanity, applying methods it had already employed elsewhere.” It was lost on no one that Horthy was changing sides in the war only after it had become obvious that the Nazis would lose.

Many Jewish survivors recall the forced marches to the Austrian border that began in November, 1944. There were women and children, grandmothers and toddlers. It took more than three days to cover the distance from Budapest. A woman named Aviva told me that those who could not move were shot, and the ditches were lined with bodies. There was no food or shelter. Young Hungarian men stood guard along the route. These were members of the Arrow Cross Party, the far-right Hungarian movement that would run the country from late 1944 to March, 1945.

Near the border, Aviva’s group was joined by a rag-tag group of labour-service men who had been force-marched from the Bor copper mines—more than 300 of them having already been killed. One of the survivors was the young Hungarian poet Mikos Radnoti. He was murdered near Gyor in Western Hungary. When his body was found in a mass grave, his pockets were filled with scraps of paper—his last poems.

Memorial at Liberty Square

Hungary does not deny the fate of its Jews. Indeed, 2014 was declared to be a year of official Holocaust remembrance. But a memorial commissioned by Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party and erected in Budapest’s Liberty Square has provoked controversy, and even outrage. It presents Hungary in the guise of a thin, languid Archangel Gabriel-like figure being seized upon by a nasty-looking German bronze eagle with outstretched wings and terrifying claws—a symbol plainly meant to suggest Hungary was an innocent party that had been preyed upon by an evil outside force. Historian Krisztian Ungvary has called it a “living horror,” and it has attracted regular protests. But the message is consistent with the larger agenda of Orbán, who wants to promote a new, whitewashed form of national history, according to which the suffering of the Jews was no more nor less brutal than that endured by the entire country under Nazi and then Soviet rule.

Not far from the monument, there is a bronze bust of Horthy at the entrance to a Hungarian Reformed church: At the 2013 unveiling ceremony, leading members of Orbán’s government were in attendance. But also nearby is a monument commemorating the orgy of killing by Hungarian cadres, even as German troops retreated from Budapest under Soviet bombardment in the last months of the war. This year, Hungary’s Jewish community was given permission to bury bones found in the river during the 2016 reconstruction of the Margaret Bridge across the Danube.

During this final spasm of senseless slaughter, thousands of Jews were marched to the Danube and shot, or just pushed into the icy waters to die. It’s important to remember that the killers weren’t German soldiers, but members of Hungary’s own Arrow Cross movement. During my research, I interviewed a survivor—a 4-year old-child at the time—who remembers being taken to the river with his mother. To this day, he thinks it was his childish voice that saved his family when he asked, “Mr. Arrow Cross, when can we go home?” he and his relatives were then ushered out of the line of fire, and he survived to tell the story.

“Shoes on the Danube” memorial

Orbán’s favorite historian, Maria Schmidt, is in charge of the museum known as House of Terror, at 60 Andrassy Boulevard in Budapest. It commemorates both the Nazi terror and the Communist terror, and includes material about Hungarian victims of the Holocaust. Five of the museum’s 17 rooms contain exhibits relating to this subject. But the same historian is also in charge of another, more controversial museum—the House of Fates, which originally had been set to open its doors five years ago. Its initial mandate had been to commemorate the Hungarian experience of the Holocaust. Israel’s Yad Vashem, Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the distinguished Hungarian-American professor Randolph Braham (1922-2018) were invited to collaborate. But almost from the beginning, the government’s local appointees reportedly began to push for a new version of the narrative, one by which Hungarians were largely blameless victims of German and Soviet aggression. The whole project fell into limbo, seemingly hostage to opposing historical voices. A Yad Vashem official declared that, from what he’d seen, “visitors to the House of Fates are to be shown and taught that, except for a tiny, criminal and fanatic minority, the citizens of Hungary were essentially blameless for what was inflicted upon their Jewish neighbors.”

As someone who grew up under Hungary’s communist dictatorship, I have a complicated relationship with the past—as my memories of family and friends are intermingled with the fears of saying the wrong thing in a country where judges, schools, the judiciary and the education system were all controlled by the government. And I can see why the country itself also has a complicated relationship with the horrors that its citizens witnessed, endured—and inflicted. But the only way to start healing from these crimes is to acknowledge how they happened.

Source: Seventy-five Years Later, Hungary Still Hasn’t Come to Terms with its Role in the Holocaust

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust Tagged with ,

Chantal Hébert: Trudeau has a choice to make about Quebec’s secularism debate

2019/05/18 Leave a comment

Indeed:

It is not only on the pipeline front that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a politically critical call to make in the lead-up to the upcoming federal campaign.

At some point in the not-so-distant future, he will have to decide whether to become more actively involved in Quebec’s ongoing secularism debate. That time is almost upon his government.

On Thursday, a Quebec parliamentary commission held its final day of public hearings on Bill 21. By all indications, the law that would forbid public sector workers in so-called positions of authority from wearing religious symbols will be on the books before the National Assembly adjourns for the summer next month.

Under the legislation, it will become a condition of employment for future police officers, prison guards, judges, Crown prosecutors and public schoolteachers to abstain from wearing religious symbols in their workplaces.

On the day Premier François Legault introduced the bill, Trudeau came out swinging. The prime minister has consistently argued that it is wrong and unnecessary to curtail the freedoms of religious minorities in the name of ensuring the secular character of Quebec’s public institutions.

Since then, a cone of silence has fallen on the federal capital.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and his NDP counterpart Jagmeet Singh both say they disapprove Quebec’s state-enforced approach to secularism.

But inasmuch as they do not reflect the views of all their Quebec MPs, neither is eager to prod Trudeau into more forceful action.

According to sources in the Quebec government, the prime minister is reserving his definitive decision as to the federal way forward until Bill 21 has been passed into law.

One option could see Trudeau turn to some rarely used sections of the Constitution to block the legislation. He could also refer the bill to the Supreme Court for an opinion, or have the federal government intervene in support of the groups that are already lining up to fight it in court.

Although Legault has pre-emptively used the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution to shelter Bill 21 from a Charter challenge, there remain a number of legal avenues open to its opponents.

Meanwhile, appeals for a forceful federal intervention — from both within and outside Quebec — have been few and far between

By comparison to the vocal debate that attended the Parti Québécois attempt to legislate on the same issue only six years ago, the discussion of Bill 21 has been, if not serene, at least less acrimonious than the previous instalment.

There are reasons for this difference.

The PQ charter covered every single public service worker — from child care workers to hospital orderlies.

Bill 21 only applies to a handful of groups, and mostly to future hires. It grandfathers the right of existing employees to wear religious symbols for as long as they continue to hold their current positions.

The 2013 charter was introduced by a minority Parti Québécois government looking for a springboard to a majority.

Between the time that charter was introduced and the election that ended in defeat for the PQ half a year later, the secularism issue remained at centre stage at the expense of all other provincial initiatives.

Legault, by comparison, is in the first months of a four-year term. He has time on his side.

Even as it has been steering Bill 21 through the National Assembly, the Coalition Avenir Québec government has not allowed it to come across as a raison d’être.

And then battle fatigue has set in. Quebecers have been discussing the place of religious symbols in the public space for more than a decade.

By now, everyone has had his or her say and most have chosen a side, with little middle ground between the two camps.

On that basis, the committee hearings on Bill 21 — even as they allowed for an airing of contrary views — featured few if any surprises.

Seven of the 36 organizations initially invited to testify declined to participate.

For different reasons, Charles Taylor and Gérard Bouchard, the two leading Quebec public intellectuals whose commission report a decade ago set off the debate over the banning of religious symbols, both profoundly dislike Bill 21.

Taylor has come to feel no legislation is the better option. Bouchard argues that expanding the religious symbols ban to teachers goes much too far.

But by now, the genie will not be put back in the bottle, at least not by those who initially let it out.

If one had to single out one takeaway from the committee hearings, it is that the political ship of Bill 21 — at least in the eye of both its fans and its detractors — has already sailed.

If Trudeau has been keeping his finger on the Quebec pulse since the debate that has polarized his home province for a decade resumed, he will allow that ship’s next port of call to be a court of law and not the federal campaign trail.

Source: Chantal Hébert: Trudeau has a choice to make about Quebec’s secularism debate

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Liberals end ‘unfair’ policy that penalized refugees from so-called ‘safe countries’

2019/05/18 Leave a comment

Not much left of these measures between court decisions and Liberal policy changes, will see what Andrew Scheer says in his forthcoming policy speech on immigration:

The Liberal government has killed a controversial Harper-era initiative that did not afford all refugees the same rights and instead penalized those who came from so-called “safe countries” like the United States.

Starting immediately, Canada will remove the tight timeframe for their claims to be heard and let them appeal possible rejections, as well as grant them the right to work immediately and receive health care — benefits previously bestowed only on asylum seekers fleeing from war-torn countries and corrupt regimes.

“The system is unfair and treats people differently based on nationality,” Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen told the Star in a phone interview Thursday. “The policy hasn’t worked. It was meant to introduce efficiency, but it has created the opposite effects. It’s time to go.”

The move by Ottawa follows several Federal Court decisions over the years that have chipped away at the core provisions of the so-called “safe country” policy introduced in 2012 by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to target rising asylum claims from Eastern Europe and Mexico. The government established a list of safe countries and created a faster processing and removal system for claimants from these nations.

The Liberals’ decision to eliminate the safe country list, to be made public Friday, officially strikes down the last remaining planks of their predecessor’s controversial revamp of the refugee asylum system.

The original reforms aimed to deter “bogus claimants” whose lives weren’t in danger, but who came to Canada for economic opportunities. However, the changes failed to stem the flow of migrants and the Conservatives did not invest the necessary resources to manage the new system.

Refugee claims from these countries were not being processed any faster, said Hussen, and added additional burden to the asylum system that was further stretched over the past two years as a result of a surge of claimants crossing into Canada from the U.S.

“We are getting rid of the last piece of the policy that is responsible for creating the legacy backlog,” said Hussen. Under the safe country regimen, refugees from the list were given limited time for claims to be heard, had restricted access to appeals and health coverage, and faced quick deportation — which the court has ruled violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Critics have long noted that people from so-called safe countries can still face persecution at home due to sexual orientation, ethnicity and religion, and for a variety of reasons their countries can fail to protect them. They also complained the statutory timelines to process safe country claims were unreasonable and created chaos and further backlogs because the previous government did not put in enough resources to let the refugee board do its job.

The safe country list initially included 23 countries and has since been expanded to 42, including the United States, Czech Republic, Hungary and Mexico.

Hussen said improving the efficiency of the asylum system has always been part of his mandate since being appointed immigration minister in 2017. Under his watch, an independent review of the system was completed, an asylum management board was established to oversee the system, the legacy backlog was cleared and additional resources were pumped in to boost the refugee board’s processing capacity.

The removal of the safe country list, however, has no impact on the bilateral Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S., which bans refugees from third countries coming through the United States and seeking asylum in Canada at the official ports of entry. These so-called irregular migrants can still seek asylum in Canada if they manage to sneak in and meet exemption requirements — and be processed like all refugees.

In 2018, the federal government invested $74 million over two years to hire 64 refugee judges and 185 support staff to handle the ballooning backlog, which reached 74,000 cases as of the end of March. As part of the 2019 federal budget, Ottawa has added more resources to boost the board’s operation to allow it to process up to 50,000 asylum claims and 13,500 appeals a year by 2021.

Immigration officials said only 12 per cent of asylum claims submitted from Jan. 1, 2013 to March 31, 2019 were from citizens of the designated safe countries.

Source: Liberals end ‘unfair’ policy that penalized refugees from so-called ‘safe countries’

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Laïcité: «On est en train de légiférer un plafond de verre», dénonce la FFQ

2019/05/18 Leave a comment

Bill 21 gender based analysis concerns:

La Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ) dénonce le caractère « sexiste » du projet de loi sur la laïcité de l’État, qui est selon elle « une forme d’oppression envers les femmes » qui se traduit par l’instauration d’un « plafond de verre ».

« On est en train de légiférer un nouveau plafond de verre qui empêcheront [certaines] femmes musulmanes d’atteindre des postes d’autorité ou d’enseignantes », a dénoncé jeudi Idil Issa, une jeune Québécoise noire de confession musulmane qui porte le voile.

« J’ai l’intention de briser ce plafond de verre que vous êtes en train de construire. […] J’aurai une position d’autorité et je serai plus juste que vous. Je ne nuirai pas aux intérêts d’une minorité déjà vulnérable dans l’exercice de mes fonctions », a-t-elle ajouté en regardant le ministre Simon Jolin-Barrette.

Mme Issa était accompagnée jeudi de la présidente de la FFQ, Gabrielle Bouchard, en cette dernière journée de consultations du projet de loi 21 à l’Assemblée nationale. Dans son mémoire, publié sur son site internet, la Fédération affirme que le projet de loi du gouvernement Legault est « discriminatoire » et qu’il repose sur « une série de confusions ».

Selon la FFQ, « l’État n’a pas à émanciper de force les femmes ».

« Au Québec, il y a des féministes croyantes, tout comme il y a des athées réactionnaires. Combien de féministes croyantes ont activement participé aux mouvements féministes au Québec ? Pensons par exemple à ces féministes chrétiennes qui luttent pour le droit à l’avortement libre et gratuit. Pensons à toutes ces féministes musulmanes qui, en tant que membres de la FFQ, se battent avec nous pour les droits de toutes les femmes au quotidien », affirme la Fédération des femmes.

« Il n’y a aucune raison de croire que de réprimer une femme croyante est un acte féministe et émancipatoire », poursuit-on.

Beaucoup d’autres batailles

Pour la FFQ, « il reste beaucoup de batailles à mener pour garantir l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes » au Québec, bien avant les restrictions prévues par le projet de loi 21 pour interdire le port de signes religieux à certaines catégories d’emploi.

« Salaire minimum à 15  $, accès aux services obstétricaux, réinvestissement massif dans les services publics, lutte au racisme systémique, accès au logement, accueil des femmes migrantes, lutte contre les violences sexuelles et domestiques, proximité des services en régions rurales et dans les petits centres, fin du temps supplémentaire obligatoire, conditions de travail des aides domestiques, enjeux socio-économiques liés à un capitalisme sauvage : voilà quelques-unes des batailles qui touchent les femmes dans leur quotidien », écrit notamment la Fédération dans son mémoire.

Les consultations du projet de loi 21 sur la laïcité de l’État prendront fin jeudi après deux semaines de travaux. En plus de la FFQ, la Coalition Inclusion Québec, la Ligue des droits et libertés de même que le Rassemblement pour la laïcité seront entendus en cours de journée par les parlementaires.

Québec utilisera-t-il le bâillon ?

Le gouvernement Legault procédera ensuite à l’étude détaillée du projet de loi en commission parlementaire au cours des prochaines semaines. Depuis son dépôt au Salon bleu, Québec a toujours répété qu’il souhaitait l’adopter avant l’ajournement des travaux parlementaires, le vendredi 14 juin prochain.

Lors de la période des questions, jeudi, le Parti libéral a dénoncé que le gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) utiliserait le bâillon pour adopter son projet de loi avant la fin de la session, même si l’étude celui-ci n’est pas terminé.

« Je crois qu’on est arrivé à une situation de consensus », a répondu le ministre Simon Jolin-Barrette.

Le député libéral Marc Tanguay a pour sa part lancé un « avis de recherche » afin que la ministre de la Justice, Sonia LeBel, se prononce sur l’utilisation d’une clause de dérogation pour protéger le projet de loi 21 de certaines contestations judiciaires.

Lorsqu’elle était questionnée en chambre, jeudi, c’est plutôt Simon Jolin-Barrette qui se levait pour répondre aux questions.

Source: Laïcité: «On est en train de légiférer un plafond de verre», dénonce la FFQ

Le Conseil du statut de la femme (CSF) demande au gouvernement Legault de réaliser des études afin de « convenir collectivement de la pertinence [d’interdire le port de signes religieux aux] personnes qui participent à l’éducation des enfants » dans le cadre du projet de loi sur la laïcité de l’État.

Contrairement à la Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ), qui a dénoncé jeudi que Québec créait « un plafond de verre » aux femmes mulsumanes qui portent le voile, le CSF appuie sans réserve l’interdiction du port de signes religieux pour les employés de l’État ayant un pouvoir coercitif (comme le recommandait en 2008 le rapport Bouchard-Taylor).

Mais le Conseil – dont le mandat est de conseiller le gouvernement « sur tout sujet lié à l’égalité, au respect des droits et au statut de la femme » – considère qu’il manque de données pour appuyer avec le même enthousiasme les dispositions du projet de loi 21 qui visent les enseignantes.

« Aux yeux du Conseil, s’il s’avérait que le port d’un signe religieux par le personnel enseignant véhicule une conception des femmes comme étant inférieures ou soumises aux hommes, son interdiction serait impérieuse. Il en irait de même s’il s’avérait que ce port brime la liberté de conscience des élèves et nuit à leur épanouissement ou encore porte atteinte au respect des convictions des parents », écrit le CSF dans son mémoire qui a été remis aux députés.

« Par souci de cohérence, l’interdiction devrait alors être étendue à toutes les catégories de personnel que côtoient les enfants à l’école », ajoute-t-on.

« Il [est donc] impératif que soient menées des études et consultations afin de mieux comprendre les effets du port de signes religieux par le personnel scolaire. De tels travaux permettraient […] de convenir collectivement de la pertinence de l’interdire ou non pour l’ensemble des personnes qui participent à l’éducation des enfants au sein des écoles ou dans d’autres milieux éducatifs », poursuit enfin le Conseil.

Plus tôt en journée, la Ligue des droits et libertés a pour sa part dénoncé le projet de loi 21 en affirmant que l’argumentaire élaboré par le ministre Simon Jolin-Barrette était basé sur des préjugés. Les consultations du projet de loi 21 se terminent jeudi.

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Irregular asylum claims in Canada drop nearly 50% from last year

2019/05/17 Leave a comment

Ironic, given the government’s plan to close the STCA loophole for those entering Canada outside regular border posts. And of course, still too early to see if this trend continues for the balance of the year:

The number of asylum-seekers crossing the border “irregularly” into Canada has slowed compared to early last year.

Statistics published by the federal government show the RCMP apprehended 3,944 irregular migrants between official border crossings in the first third of this year.

That’s a 48-per-cent decline compared to the more than 7,600 irregular border crossers intercepted between January and April 2018.

Despite this, Darrell Bricker of the polling firm Ipsos Public Affairs says data shows Canadians are increasingly concerned over immigration levels in Canada, due in large part to the influx of irregular migrants.

He and other experts who took part in an immigration summit in Ottawa last week are warning against rising populist sentiments that could harden Canadian attitudes against newcomers.

Fen Hampson, executive director of the World Refugee Council, says a key concern is that the public doesn’t differentiate between refugees and economic immigrants — and that Canadians may not realize Canada’s refugee influx is nothing compared to the migrant crises facing other countries.

Source: Irregular asylum claims in Canada drop nearly 50% from last year

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Opinion: Quebec’s religious-symbol bill hearings have gone exactly as François Legault’s CAQ planned

2019/05/17 Leave a comment

Konrad Yakabuski’s take although I don’t share his conclusion that it made the CAQ proposals appear reasonable:

Eleven years ago this month, Quebec wise men Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor tabled their report on religious accommodation in Canada’s once “priest-ridden province.”

The two intellectual giants chosen by then-premier Jean Charest to extricate his Liberal government from the quagmire in which it found itself – it had been reduced to a slim minority after an election campaign that largely focused on religious accommodation – went to great lengths to insist that secular Quebec was not experiencing a clash of values. The apparent “crisis” involving the demands of religious minorities for recognition was largely, to use a term now in vogue, fake news. Some media organizations, they concluded, had been making mountains out of molehills, creating a false sense of urgency and collective insecurity.

And yet, Prof. Bouchard and Prof. Taylor went on to lay out in 310 dense pages how Quebec was different from the rest of Canada and North America, and how it was incumbent upon the provincial government to lay down the parameters for secularism. Rejecting the Canadian policy of multiculturalism as “poorly adapted to Quebec’s reality,” their report called for legislation establishing “interculturalism” as the model for managing diversity in the province.

”It is in the interests of any community to maintain a minimum of cohesion,” the Bouchard-Taylor report concluded. “For a small nation like Quebec, always preoccupied with its future as a cultural minority, integration represents a condition of its development, indeed its survival.”

The report presented its ideas for how to help an insecure minority – in this case, French-speaking Quebeckers – feel more secure. After spending decades seeking to eliminate the pervasive influence of the Catholic Church in public institutions, they sympathized with the desire of Quebeckers to prevent other religions from taking its place.

It was hence that Prof. Bouchard and Prof. Taylor recommended that state employees exercising “coercive powers” – such as police officers, prison guards, Crown prosecutors and judges – be prohibited from wearing conspicuous religious symbols. It was not a recommendation they made lightly; their report makes clear that such a prohibition would deprive some religious minorities of the ability to exercise certain state functions. But they concluded that it nevertheless constituted the “right balance for Quebec society today.”

It was obvious then that, in implementing such a ban, Quebec would put itself on a collision course with the rest of Canada. Indeed, by 2008, it had already been 18 years since the RCMP first began allowing Sikh officers to wear turbans as part of their official uniform. Whether they intended it to or not, their recommendation soon took on a life of its own, as proponents of Quebec secularism seized on the imprimatur of Bouchard-Taylor to legitimize their cause.

Appearing last week before the National Assembly commission studying Bill 21, Prof. Taylor, now 85, pleaded that he had been “naive” about the monster he helped create in tabling this recommendation. “Just promoting this kind of program starts to provoke incidents of hate,” he insisted, explaining why he no longer supports a recommendation he previously defended.

In Saturday’s Journal de Montréal, Quebec’s most-read newspaper, three columns were devoted to discrediting the McGill University philosopher. One compared him to the washed-up drunk Calvero in Charlie Chaplin’s 1952 film Limelight. “There is only one word to qualify this 180-degree turn – pathetic,” former Parti Québécois minister Joseph Facal wrote.

It might be going too far to say Prof. Taylor had been set up by Quebec Immigration Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, who has meticulously stage-managed the parliamentary hearings on Bill 21, which end on Thursday. But the distinguished professor did not do himself any favours by effectively likening supporters of the bill that would implement the principal recommendation from his report (while adding teachers into the mix of state employees prohibited from wearing religious symbols) to hatemongers. He played into caricatures of himself.

That’s exactly how Mr. Jolin-Barrette wanted the hearings to unfold. “In the course of the past 15 years, previous governments have not succeeded in translating and implementing the will of the Quebec people to establish a secular framework for the state,” the minister said. “Quebeckers can be proud of this bill because it allows us to turn the page on this issue.”

By giving so much airtime to those who hold extreme opinions – former Liberal senator Céline Hervieux-Payette warned that “behind” the Islamic veil lay genital mutilation and forced marriages, while several intervenors called on the government to extend the religious-symbols ban to all state employees – the hearings aimed to ensure that the Coalition Avenir Québec’s Bill 21 came out looking like a reasonable compromise.

For Mr. Jolin-Barrette and his boss, Premier François Legault, it was mission accomplished.

Source: Opinion: Quebec’s religious-symbol bill hearings have gone exactly as François Legault’s CAQ planned

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