Poll finds deep divisions among Ukrainian Jews on threat of anti-Semitism

2019/05/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

In the largest poll of Ukrainian Jews conducted in 15 years, nearly one fifth of 900 respondents (17 percent) said that anti-Semitism has increased in the country, while another fifth (21 percent) said the opposite.

The data underline divisions among Ukrainian Jews over the effects of the 2014 revolution that toppled the previous regime and unleashed an explosion of nationalist sentiment.

In the poll, commissioned by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress this year, another 23 percent of respondents said it was too hard to say whether there has been an increase anti-Semitism. Thirty-six percent of respondents said the level of anti-Semitism has not changed.

Ariel University’s Prof. Ze’ev Khanin developed the methodology for the poll and presented it Monday at a Kyiv Jewish Forum event. The previous survey of Ukrainian Jews this size occurred in 2003-2004.

Michael Mirilashvili, president of the Eurasian Jewish Congress, said that whereas anti-Semitism “is certainly an important challenge,” the main one is helping Jews “hold onto a strong Jewish identity that can withstand the environment and not weaken as a result of social pressures.” EAJC, he added, is investing in projects focused on achieving this, including Limmud.

Other key findings of the survey include:

  • Seventy-two percent of Ukrainian Jews said they feel solidarity with Israel, compared with 3 percent who said they do not and 26 percent who could not say.

  • Forty-two percent said they find it important that their descendants feel Jewish, compared to 25 percent who said it was not.

  • Twenty-nine percent described themselves as “Ukrainian Jews;” 22 percent as “simply Jews”; 6 percent as “Russian Jews”; and 21 percent percent as “human beings,” regardless of their Jewish affiliation.

Source: Poll finds deep divisions among Ukrainian Jews on threat of anti-Semitism

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Supreme Court says migrants can bring detention challenge to judge

2019/05/13 Leave a comment

A reminder of legal constraints regarding immigration policy:

Refugee claimants have the right to challenge their prolonged incarceration before a Superior Court judge, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

In a 6-1 decision released Friday, justices ruled in favour of Tusif Ur Rehman Chhina, a Pakistani national who challenged his prolonged detention in a maximum-security remand centre in Calgary. He was detained because he was deemed a security risk.

His case was reviewed regularly by an immigration tribunal, which repeatedly ordered him detained as a flight risk.

The majority of the justices found the tribunal process does not provide for a review that is “as broad and advantageous” as a hearing before a Superior Court.

Chhina had been stripped of his refugee status and ordered deported because he misrepresented his identity to Canadian officials and was involved in serious criminality, including possession of a prohibited weapon, forgery and fraud.

Chhina was removed from Canada in September, 2017 but his legal case carried on, to determine whether the current detention regime is constitutional.

He had argued his charter rights to liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention were violated.

Human rights groups praise ruling

The ruling focused on the legal principle of habeas corpus, which allows someone in custody to go before a judge to challenge a detention. The ruling sets aside an exception that compelled migrants without Canadian citizenship to challenge immigration detention only through immigration tribunals or a federal judicial review.

Human rights groups and refugee advocates welcomed the decision.

Amnesty International said Canada has an international legal obligation to guarantee immigration detainees are able to exercise the right to a Superior Court hearing.

“The right to liberty is a fundamental human right. This decision vindicates immigration detainees who have been denied their liberty for years on end with no meaningful way to challenge that injustice and regain their freedom,” said Amnesty International Canada’s secretary general Alex Neve. “They can now seek justice in superior courts and have their Charter rights protected and enforced.”

‘Devastating impacts’

The Canadian Council for Refugees said detainees don’t always get a fair hearing and incarcerating them can have serious repercussions.

“Detention often has devastating impacts, even when it is only for a short period, particularly for children, refugee claimants, trafficked persons and individuals suffering from mental health issues,” reads a statement.

Swathi Sekhar, lawyer for the advocacy group End Immigration Detention Network, said the high court delivered an “important tool” for migrants to challenge their detentions. In a habeas corpus application, the onus is on the government to prove the detention is lawful, but in a detention review the onus is usually on the migrant to prove they should be released.

“This is one more tool, but more importantly this is one more large step on the road to the abolition of immigration detention,” she said.

Risks for LGBT migrants

There were 11 interveners in the case.

One of them, Egale Canada, said migrants often suffer homophobic violence, while transgender migrants are often detained in facilities that don’t align with their gender identities.

“LGBT people who are detained for immigration purposes face life-threatening conditions and, prior to this ruling, there was no tangible way to challenge these conditions under the current system,” said Egale’s executive director Helen Kennedy.

The ruling may not affect a large number of detainees. According to the recent statistics, just 122 migrants were detained for longer than 99 days over the last quarter.

The decision comes as the federal government takes steps to improve the system in response to sharp criticism of harsh detention conditions and policies.

Scott Bardsley, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, said the government has made improvements to infrastructure and mental and medical health services, while expanding alternatives to detention and the use of provincial jails and reducing the number of minors in detention.

The recently tabled Bill C-98 would create an expanded, independent oversight body to review the CBSA. Bardsley said the bill will allow migrants to file complaints before that body about detentions and the conduct of CBSA employees.

Source: Supreme Court says migrants can bring detention challenge to judge

Sharry Aiken and Stephanie Silverman make the case that A world without immigration detention is possible.

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Is the British Home Office creating two tiers of Irish citizenship?

2019/05/13 Leave a comment

Of interest, as the UK grapples with the implications of Brexit and Northern Ireland:

The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) explicitly states that people born in Northern Ireland are unique within the UK in having the birthright to identify as Irish or British or both.

However, the British Home Office is now arguing through the courts that the people born in Northern Ireland are “automatically British” as they were “clearly born in the United Kingdom.”

This is not a cosmetic assertion, it’s not merely a quibble over language or intent. Making citizens of Northern Ireland automatically British against their wishes has profound implications for their lives and for the future stability of the peace there.

Critics contend that the Home Office is essentially forcing British citizenship on Irish citizens born in Northern Ireland – citizens who identify as Irish by birth and by choice.

They are also forcibly countering an option that the people of Ireland north and south voted in record numbers for in the Good Friday Agreement referendum in 1998.

Take the example of an Irish national who holds an Irish passport, and who was born in Derry. The position of the Home Office is that they are a dual British/Irish national, but if they would like to fully retain and access their rights as an Irish and E.U. national in the U.K. they would have to “renounce” their British citizenship and rely solely on their Irish citizenship. Even if they have never claimed British citizenship. Even if they do not hold a British passport.

Source: Is the British Home Office creating two tiers of Irish citizenship?

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Macpherson: Quebec’s Fox News, only bigger

2019/05/11 Leave a comment

Of note, and the consequent implications:

For their shrill populism, the Québecor media have been called Quebec’s Fox News. But in terms of their influence on this province’s politics, they’re much bigger than that.

Last weekend, in the annual Quebec journalism awards, Québecor’s newspapers, television channels and digital media were shut out.

But its flagship daily Le Journal de Montréal boasted of survey results suggesting that on all platforms, the three Québecor dailies were read at least once a week by more than half of Quebecers over the age of 14.

And Québecor’s TVA network bragged that its newscasts and LCN all-news channel led the television ratings in their respective categories.

This market domination by the Québecor media, and their resulting influence on public opinion, help explain poll results published this week suggesting that Quebec is the only province where a majority supports legislation like Bill 21.

The Legault government’s proposed anti-hijab-and-kippah-and-turban bill is supposed to settle, after more than a decade, the issue of accommodating minority religions. As the Bouchard-Taylor provincial commission on the subject reported in 2008, that issue was largely created by sensationalist and often inaccurate reporting by Québecor. And it’s mainly Québecor that has kept the issue alive.

In December 2017, TVA reported that a Montreal mosque had female construction workers removed from a work site outside during Friday prayers. The report was quickly debunked, but it wasn’t until a year later that TVA grudgingly admitted it was false and apologized.

Instead of editorials, Québecor’s dailies have columnists who circulate among its “convergent” platforms defending the supremacy of what one of them, Mathieu Bock-Côté, calls Quebec’s “historic French-speaking majority” — that is, ethnic French-Canadians — against the province’s minorities and other enemies of the true people.

Last January, another Le Journal columnist, Denise Bombardier, called minorities who complain of their treatment in the province “enemies … of French-speaking Quebec.” And she issued a call to “extinguish these hotbeds of intolerance,” even though she acknowledged it might be used by the “hotheaded and violently prejudiced.”

Le Journal’s columnists have clout. The non-binding 2017 National Assembly motion against the public use of English, in the form of the bilingual “bonjour-hi” greeting in businesses, resulted from a campaign spearheaded by one of them, Sophie Durocher.

Another, Richard Martineau, is obsessed with “Islamism” and has been accused of Islamophobia, which he denies.

In 2017, TVA’s rival Radio-Canada reported that in the previous 10 years, Martineau had written about 700 columns directly or indirectly concerning Islam.

A UQAM sociologist, Rachad Antonius, told Radio-Canada he had concluded from a study of Le Journal’s news coverage and columns on Islam that their cumulative effect fostered distrust of Muslims.

But if “Islamists” are a Martineau dog whistle, they may not be his only one. A cheerleader for Bill 21, he predicted that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will come under pressure to challenge the legislation from “followers of multiculturalism who live in Hampstead or Côte-Saint-Luc,” Montreal suburbs widely identified with their Jewish residents.

Québecor’s domination of the marketplace puts pressure on other media to follow its lead, in both news coverage and opinion. And its position may get even stronger, as its competitors get weaker.

The same day that Le Journal boasted of its readership, its main competitor, La Presse, published another plea for reader donations.

From 250,000 paying subscribers when it was still charging for its journalism, the number of its financial supporters willing to donate money to keep reading La Presse has shrunk to a total of 23,500 donors for the past four months.

This was after Le Journal reported last week that La Presse and another of Québecor’s competitor, Quebec City’s daily Le Soleil, are in serious financial trouble, and have asked the Legault government for help.

It said the government is “particularly pessimistic” about the future of Capitales Médias, which owns Le Soleil and five small regional dailies. And it said that, despite La Presse’s campaign to raise $5 million in donations, it could be broke within a year.

Source: Macpherson: Quebec’s Fox News, only bigger

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German government defends planned immigration laws | Germany| News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond

2019/05/11 Leave a comment

Responding to the most immediate needs of the business community:

In a heated debate in the Bundestag on Thursday, the German government made the case for its much discussed proposed law governing immigration for skilled workers.

The new proposal, initially agreed upon by Angela Merkel’s Cabinet five months ago, is the government’s response to many years of complaints from a business community increasingly concerned about the lack of qualified IT specialists and engineers in Germany and shortfalls in other vocational professions. The country’s aging population is also desperately in need of health care workers.

A historic turning point

Conservative Interior Minister Horst Seehofer was on hand to present the draft law. He described it as a “historic point of juncture” that provided clear criteria for who should be able to come to Germany to work and under what conditions.

The minister was careful to point out that any perceived liberalization of Germany’s immigration laws could easily be corrected in the future, should the job-market situation change.

One of the key planks of the proposed law is the suspension of a mandatory check accompanying all job applications from outside the EU that makes sure there are no German or EU citizen applicants, who have priority.

The law will also make it easier for immigrants with a vocational qualification to move to Germany. Up until now, the German system had mainly favored those with academic qualifications.

Additionally it will also allow some people, under certain circumstances, to come to Germany to seek vocational training.

Interior Minister Seehofer said the law would be ‘historic’

The opposition criticized the limited scope of the plan, while the government’s conservative faction in the Bundestag stressed in a statement that there must be “no immigration into the social security systems.”

Tolerated, as workers

The German labor minister, Hubertus Heil, also defended another migration law proposed by the government that modifies how certain asylum-seekers whose applications have been rejected can obtain a “tolerated” status, meaning they are nonetheless allowed to stay in the country. The modifications apply to rejected asylum-seekers who have begun a state-recognized vocational training course or work for at least 20 hours a week, learned German, and have been able to support themselves for 18 months already.

Heil defended the move as a “pragmatic solution,” arguing it made no sense to deport people who were already working in Germany while at the same time trying to encourage other skilled workers to come.

Immigration reforms ‘too restrictive’

But some experts did not think much of the idea.

“It is much too restrictive to make much sense,” Thomas Gross, immigration law professor at Osnabrück University, said of the toleration article. “There are a few former refugees whose status hasn’t been recognized. They will get a more long-term ‘toleration status’ under very tight restrictions. But that isn’t a residency permit, but a second-class, uncertain status, and it will only be relevant for very few people.”

Gross was similarly unimpressed with draft law on general immigration. “It’s certainly a compromise that offers access and progress for those with non-academic professions with training qualifications,” the professor told DW. “But for all other areas it brings practically no progress.”

Attacks from all sides

The government, made up of Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, and the center-left Social Democrats, was bombarded from both sides of the parliament during the debate.

The business-friendly Free Democrats, represented by Linda Teuteberg, dismissed the draft law as “tentative and uninspired” and said it offered no great progress.

Green party parliamentary leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt said the proposal was more of an “obstruction law” rather than a modern immigration law, a line that was also taken by the socialist Left party.

The exact opposite argument was made by Gottfried Curio, a representative from the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), who said the proposed law would only attract more “underqualified poverty migration.”

Germany is facing a care-worker crisis

Human rights organizations like Pro Asyl also argued that the draft law was orientated more towards Germany’s economic interests and would help very few asylum-seekers who were trying to integrate in Germany.

Bureaucratic bottleneck

Bettina Offer, an immigration lawyer who represents major German companies looking for employees abroad, said it was unrealistic to expect the government to completely overhaul Germany’s immigration law in anything less than three to five years. According to her, what the government had done was ease the most critical points in the current legal situation.

“They wanted a quick solution because skilled workers were needed quickly, and I think that made sense,” Offer said. “That has been improved, but it’s true that the new law only offers a very rough framework, which I think will be refined in the next few years.”

“But what is perhaps even more important for the skilled workers is that the government has understood that the bottleneck is not so much at the legal level, but at the bureaucratic and administrative level,” she added.

In other words, it’s the practical problems that deter many qualified people from coming to Germany, such as difficulties getting visa appointments, either in Germany’s Foreign Citizen Offices or in consulates abroad.

“The new law includes a fast-tracked procedure for qualified workers. Businesses have been calling for that a long time, and that has finally been heard,” said Offer.

The law is supposed to come into effect on January 1, 2020, though the government has also warned that the relevant bureaucracies will need a six-month preparation period, which would mean the parliament would have to pass the law this summer to have an effect.

Source: German government defends planned immigration laws | Germany| News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond

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Laïcité: le SFPQ veut élargir l’interdiction des signes religieux

2019/05/11 Leave a comment

Regressive position for a union to take:

Le Syndicat de la fonction publique et parapublique du Québec (SFPQ) demande au gouvernement Legault d’étendre l’interdiction du port de signes religieux « ostentatoires » à l’ensemble des employés de l’État qui ont des contacts avec les citoyens.

« Les symboles religieux ostentatoires n’ont pas leur place dans la fonction publique puisqu’ils sont contraires au principe de neutralité », a affirmé le SFPQ, jeudi, de passage à Québec pour la troisième journée de consultations du projet de loi 21 sur la laïcité de l’État.

Le syndicat, qui représente quelque 30 000 employés de la fonction publique québécoise, ramène ainsi des dispositions qui étaient prévues dans la défunte Charte des valeurs présentée par le gouvernement péquiste de Pauline Marois.

« Ces symboles, qui revêtent une signification importante pour les personnes qui les portent, peuvent être perçus comme très dérangeants par les citoyens et citoyennes qui entrent en interaction avec ces personnes », affirme le SFPQ dans son mémoire, qui fait un parallèle entre le devoir de neutralité politique des fonctionnaires à la volonté d’imposer une neutralité face à une appartenance religieuse.

Le projet de loi 21 présenté par le gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) interdit le port de signes religieux (qu’ils soient « ostentatoires » ou non) aux employés de l’État en position d’autorité, incluant les enseignants et les directions scolaires.

Québec prévoit une clause grand-père pour les employés du secteur public qui sont visés par la loi, mais qui sont déjà à l’emploi de l’État en portant un signe religieux. Le SFPQ souhaite que ce droit acquis soit préservé tout au long de leur carrière. À l’heure actuelle, la loi prévoit qu’un employé visé perd son droit s’il change de poste ou d’employeur au sein de la fonction publique.

Stigmatisations des gais et des croyants

Lors de la période des questions, jeudi, la cheffe de Québec solidaire, Manon Massé, a fait un lien entre les droits des homosexuels qui ont été protégés en 1977 dans la Charte des droits et libertés de la personne et les droits que Québec souhaite désormais restreindre à certains employés de l’État qui portent un signe religieux.

« Le premier ministre répète à qui veut l’entendre que c’est parce que c’est comme ça qu’on vit au Québec [qu’il veut interdire les signes religieux aux employés de l’État en position d’autorité, incluant les enseignants]. Comme si, lorsque nos prédécesseurs ont adopté [la Charte des droits et libertés], tous partis confondus avaient erré, en 1975. Et pourtant, en 1977, lorsque les droits des personnes homosexuelles ont été inclus dans la charte québécoise, ce n’était pas comme ça qu’on vivait au Québec », a dit Mme Massé.

« À l’époque, une large partie de la population était convaincue que nous, les gais et lesbiennes, on ne pouvait pas enseigner ou s’occuper des enfants, parce que, dans les faits, on allait les contaminer avec notre différence. Une chance que les politiciens de l’époque, puis ceux qui ont suivi, n’ont pas appuyé leur seul jugement sur les qu’en-dira-t-on, parce qu’aujourd’hui il manquerait bien des profs à l’école », a-t-elle ajouté.

« Personne ne peut nous reprocher de ne pas avoir été clairs durant la campagne électorale. […] On en parle depuis des années. Je comprends que la cheffe de Québec solidaire n’est pas d’accord, je comprends aussi que certains députés libéraux ne sont pas d’accord […], mais je pense qu’on doit avoir ce débat de façon calme, sans s’accuser de gros mots. Il faut être capable de débattre au Québec de façon respectueuse. Je pense que notre projet de loi est modéré, justement pour essayer de rassembler […]. Je pense qu’on a le droit au Québec de faire ce choix », a répondu le premier ministre François Legault.

Que prévoit le projet de loi 21  ?

Le projet de loi 21 sur la laïcité de l’État, déposé en mars dernier par le gouvernement Legault, prévoit l’interdiction du port de signes religieux aux employés de l’État en position d’autorité, y compris les enseignants et les directions d’écoles publiques. Les policiers, les agents correctionnels, les agents de la faune, les constables spéciaux, les procureurs de la Couronne et tous les avocats du gouvernement sont également visés. Idem pour le président de l’Assemblée nationale et ses vice-présidents, alors que les députés pourront continuer de porter leurs signes religieux. Une clause de droit acquis est également prévue pour les employés de l’État actuellement en poste et qui portent un signe religieux, tant et aussi longtemps qu’ils ne changent pas de poste ou d’employeur. Tous les signes religieux sont visés par le projet de loi : tant le hijab que la kippa et la croix catholique. Québec a également inclus une disposition de dérogation aux chartes des droits afin que sa loi ne soit pas contestée devant les tribunaux.

Source: Laïcité: le SFPQ veut élargir l’interdiction des signes religieux

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Australia: Foreign-born voters and their families helped elect Turnbull in 2016. Can they save ScoMo?

2019/05/11 Leave a comment

Interesting overview of the upcoming Australian election and ethnic votes. Some similarities to Canada but with greater polarization and more extreme views:

At the 2016 federal election, a small but significant vote cast by foreign-born Australians and their families helped elect the Liberal Party. The voters backed conservative minor parties in typically Labor-leaning electorates, and their preferences flowed to the Liberals.

Electoral pundits made little of this phenomenon at the time, and the media were not particularly interested. But in the wake of a similar voting pattern in the same-sex marriage plebiscite in 2017, the search is now on to find the elusive “ethnic vote”.

Who are these voters and where do they live?

The two largest collectives of non-English speaking groups are Chinese-Australians, and people from the Indian subcontinent including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. These “ethnic groups” are already multicultural, multilingual and politically diverse.

Pockets of Chinese-Australians concentrated in key swing seats in NSW and Victoria were mainly responsible for the surprise outcomes in 2016. That included Reid, Banks and Barton in NSW and Chisholm in Victoria. Three of the four went to the Liberals, but on demographic grounds and political trends at the time, all could have been delivered to Labor. (While Barton stayed Labor, the swing to the Liberals was significant.)

In 2019, we could see a similar pattern emerge in these seats again, as well as in Moreton in QLD, Hotham in Victoria, and Parramatta, Greenway and Bennelong in NSW.

Australia has over 300 ancestries, 100 religions and 300 languages, so invoking a category like “ethnic” does not lead in a particular direction – especially given the divisions and diversity within cultural groups and language communities.

And this population diversity has been shifting as newer groups have accelerated their presence, and older groups have passed on. The foreign-born population now have a growing number of Australian-born children, although many may not yet be able to vote.

How are the parties targeting them?

The main ethnic communities lobby group, the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia (FECCA), has produced a policy wish-list and is seeking responses from the parties.

Among the majors, only the Greens have a clearly articulated multicultural policy, having put a proposal for a Multiculturalism Act with subsequent implementation and rights machinery to the Senate over a year ago.

The ALP still sits on its hands on the legislative option, possibly fearing that supporting such a move might trigger negative reactions from the working class and more racist voters.

Their policy now includes a “body” named Multicultural Australia, with a string of commissioners across the country. It will probably come under Tony Burke as Minister, focusing on citizenship and access issues. In this, it is a variant on the 1990s Office of Multicultural Affairs. This was once part of the Hawke/Keating prime minister’s office but was abolished by John Howard as soon as he could.

Labor has committed more funds for community language schools and criticised delays in processing citizenship applications, as well as the high level of English required to pass the test. Former Senator Sam Dastyari has argued that opening up parental reunion is a major offer to a range of ethnic groups needing older family members to do caring work. This move, as one of this author’s informants, said, would really “win the Desi’s heart”, and probably many other ethnic groups as well. The idea has prompted a hostile response from the Coalition.

While Liberal leader Scott Morrison reiterates the old Turnbull mantra of Australia being the most successful multicultural country, the government’s lacklustre Multicultural Advisory Council no longer seems to have a web presence other than one which promotes integration and Australian values.

The Liberals propose a system of aged care “navigators” to help people with limited English survive the aged care system, while also injecting funds into start-up businesses run by migrants.

Conservative think-tank the Institute for Public Affairs retains as its second policy demand of any Liberal government that Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act be abolished. The Liberals took this into 2013 and 2016; Morrison has said it’s not on for 2019, though the right of the party is still committed.

What role will they play in the election?

Ethnic communities are not necessarily either cohesive or unanimous in their political viewpoints unless something particularly touches on their “ethnicity”.

The recent anti-Chinese sentiment reflected in media headlines about the alleged corruption of Australian political parties by wealthy Chinese residents may be doing that among Chinese communities. Many Australian Chinese think that Labor is much more sensitive to these issues than the Coalition, and Liberal Party Chinese figures have voiced these concerns in public gatherings.

Although they can be very interested and involved in politics, Chinese Australians have tended to hold back from active political engagement in the past. Indians, by contrast, bring some knowledge of English and, coming from a Westminster democratic system, tend to be more directly engaged – as party members for example. The Greens are particularly open to south Asian members; so, it seems, is the Christian Democratic Party (CDP).

While there are many conservative and religious parties across the country, only NSW has the CDP. It’s offering a “multicultural” array of candidates and directing preferences to the Liberals. The party was key in funnelling support from East Asian intensive electorates in 2016.

After unsuccessful discussions over a number of elections as to whether a socially conservative alliance might be formed between Muslims and Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Daoist and non-religious groups, something like the alliance appears to have been launched in Sydney. Reportedly “targeting Labor seats that had a high no vote in the same-sex marriage survey”, it could put some further some punch behind the Christian Democratic Party even though it’s not directly affiliated. The CDP is also targeting the Pacific communities in its campaign of support for Christian footballer Israel Folau.

Meanwhile, parties of the far right are competing to present their anti-multicultural agendas. In Lindsay, neo-Nazi Jim Saleam represents the Australia First Party, while across the country, right-leaning parties tussle for the xenophobic vote. That includes Rise Up Australia, Shooters Farmers and Fishers, Australian Conservatives, Australian National Conservatives, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and United Australia Party.

Although these parties may preference the Coalition, they may prove to be one force that drives ethnic communities towards the ALP.

Election day and beyond

Election day will provide the proof for many of the claims about ethnicity, voting, influence and ideology. It’s highly likely that the senators elected from the right will run a unity ticket against multiculturalism in the new Senate.

This year may well prove the last flash of a mainly White Australian election, with its defenders doubling down on the right, while the centre takes on a multi-coloured hue, and the left is ever more rainbow. A lot of the knowledge that we may glean from the election process will only be learned in its aftermath, picking through small details and trying to form a pattern of explanation.

It has taken the Australian public sphere the best part of three years to work out what happened with cultural diversity and its complexities in 2016. We may well have just as long to wait this time around.

Source: Foreign-born voters and their families helped elect Turnbull in 2016. Can they save ScoMo?

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Younger Arabs embrace Palestinian identity, redefining Israeli citizenship

2019/05/11 Leave a comment

Interesting evolution of identity:

Loudspeakers blared nationalist Arabic music across hillsides in northern Israel on Thursday as children ran across a field waving Palestinian flags.

The scene was a rally for members of Israel’s 21% Arab minority. The Israeli term for them is Israeli Arabs, but many now reject that label, identifying instead as “Palestinian with Israeli citizenship,” or simply “Palestinian.”

Each year they hold a gathering to mark the Nakba — or “Catastrophe” — when Palestinians lament the loss of their homeland in the 1948-49 war that surrounded the creation of the modern Jewish state.

The scene was a rally for members of Israel’s 21% Arab minority. The Israeli term for them is Israeli Arabs, but many now reject that label, identifying instead as “Palestinian with Israeli citizenship,” or simply “Palestinian.”

Each year they hold a gathering to mark the Nakba — or “Catastrophe” — when Palestinians lament the loss of their homeland in the 1948-49 war that surrounded the creation of the modern Jewish state.

The event is a celebration of Palestinian identity that, Arab politicians and academics say, reflects a change in thinking over the decades.

On Thursday, busloads arrived at a roped-off field near the Khubbayza, a ruined Palestinian village that lay 20 miles south of Haifa and was destroyed in the fighting between Arab and Jewish forces in 1948.

It and hundreds of others are now marked on paper and digital maps by groups such as “Palestine Remembered.”

The Nakba rally is timed each year to coincide with the day that Israelis in the rest of the country celebrate Independence Day.

On Thursday, Palestinian flags flew in the roped-off field where Israeli authorities gave permission for the gathering. Across a country lane, Israeli banners were draped across the hillside from which Israeli police watched, a drone hovering nearby.

Shouting over the music, Rula Nasr-Mazzawi, 42, a psychologist, said many of the first two generations of Arabs in post-1948 Israel were too scared to discuss matters of identity openly.

“But now we are seeing the younger generation, the third generation, more and more identifying very frankly and very loudly as Palestinians,” she said.

“The term Israeli Arabs is mistaken, it’s not accurate. We are Palestinians by nationality, and we are Israeli citizens.”

Ahmad Tibi, Arab member of Iraeli parliament

In an interview earlier this year, Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of Israel’s parliament with the Ta’al party said: “The term Israeli Arabs is mistaken, it’s not accurate. We are Palestinians by nationality, and we are Israeli citizens.”

He added: “They are saying Arab Israeli or Israeli Arabs in order to say that we are not Palestinians. We bypassed that. We are part of the Palestinian people, and we are struggling in order to be equal citizens.”

Identity and citizenship

Israel’s population recently passed the 9 million mark, according to the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics. This includes 1.89 million Arab citizens — mostly Muslim, Druze and Christians — living alongside the 6.68 million Jews who make up the 74.2% majority.

Professor As’ad Ghanem, 53, a Haifa University political scientist and co-author of the book “Palestinians in Israel,” drew a distinction with Druze and Bedouin Arabs, many of whom serve in the Israeli military, taken by many as an indicator of integration.

In contrast, most Muslims and Christian Arabs do not serve.

He said Israel’s Arabs had undergone a slow transformation from their initial status as marginalized within both Israel and the Arab world.

A new generation of intellectuals and politicians were “much more strong than those in the 50s and 60s,” and voiced their community’s complaints about discrimination in the job market, and lack of services, he said.

“The majority think that they want to be identified as Palestinian,” he said.

Nonetheless, he said most Israeli Arabs still valued their Israeli citizenship and would oppose attempts to transfer them to Gaza or the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule, because “they see all the troubles on the other side.”

A woman shouts as she takes part in the Nakba rally marking the “Catastrophe” when Palestinians lost their homeland in the 1948-49 war, near the abandoned village of Khubbayza, northern Israel, May 9, 2019.

‘Best conditions’

Recently, Arabs were angered after Israel’s parliament last year passed the nation-state law, which declared that only Jews have the right to self-determination in the country.

“Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people — and only it.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reasserted that principle just before his victory in the election a month ago, saying on Instagram: “Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people — and only it.”

He sought to placate non-Jewish citizens — and critics at home and abroad — by adding “there is no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel. They have equal rights like all of us and the Likud government has invested more in the Arab sector than any other government.”

Some of the Arab minority disagree with the sentiments expressed at Thursday’s rally, saying Israel protects them from threats in the Middle East.

“I am very proud to be an Israeli Arab,” said Yoseph Haddad, 33, a Greek Catholic speaking in the mixed Jewish and Arab city of Haifa.

“The fact is that if you take a look around all or most of the Arab nations, the Israeli Arabs here in Israel are in the best conditions.”

But Eyad Barghuty, 39, a novelist and former head of the Arab Cultural Association, said there had been an evolution in identity.

His generation had to struggle to find their roots within a country that emphasized the majority’s narrative, he said, while a younger generation took their Palestinian-ness for granted.

“I saw the ruins of Palestinian villages across the Galilee when I was a young man working on building sites, and I had to go to encyclopedias to look these places up. … Now there’s an app.”

Eyad Barghuty, 39, novelist

“I saw the ruins of Palestinian villages across the Galilee when I was a young man working on building sites, and I had to go to encyclopedias to look these places up,” he said. “Now there’s an app.”

Source: Younger Arabs embrace Palestinian identity, redefining Israeli citizenship

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Laïcité : «On n’a pas l’air d’une société décente», dit Gérard Bouchard

2019/05/10 Leave a comment

Worth noting:

Le sociologue Gérard Bouchard croit que le Québec « n’a pas l’air d’une société décente » avec le projet de loi sur la laïcité de l’État qui dépeint une province peu sensible aux droits fondamentaux.

De passage à Québec dans le cadre des consultations du projet de loi 21 du ministre Simon Jolin-Barrette, celui qui a cosigné en 2008 le rapport Bouchard-Taylor croit que les libéraux sont en partie responsables de la polarisation du débat en n’ayant pas agi à l’époque.

« Si [le gouvernement Charest] avait appliqué nos principales recommandations, on ne serait pas là aujourd’hui, a dit M. Bouchard. On pourrait enfin s’occuper enfin d’enjeux qui sont beaucoup plus importants. »

« Avec un enjeu aussi émotif, qui rejoint ce qui est de plus profond chez une personne, c’est évident que si le débat traîne, on va d’échec en échec, avec de l’impatience, de l’animosité, de l’agressivité, de la polarisation et des positions qui se durcissent », a poursuivi le sociologue.

Avec le projet de loi 21 du gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), qu’il qualifie de « radical » puisqu’il utilise une clause de dérogation pour le préserver de contestations judiciaires, la réputation du Québec est entachée, a dit M. Bouchard.

« On a l’air de gens qui ne sont pas très sensibles aux droits fondamentaux, a affirmé le sociologue. On a l’air d’une société pas très démocratique [en ayant] recours à la clause dérogatoire pour se soustraire à l’examen des tribunaux. On n’a pas l’air d’une société décente. »

Des conséquences sociales  

Gérard Bouchard a aussi prévenu mercredi que le gouvernement Legault risque de détériorer les relations entre la population majoritaire francophone et les communautés minoritaires du Québec.

« Les relations entre la majorité [francophone] et les minorités ne sont pas en bon état au Québec, notamment depuis la Charte des valeurs du Parti québécois. On a pu le voir encore cet été avec la controverse sur les appropriations culturelles. L’état de ces relations est mauvais et je pense que le projet de loi [caquiste] va les détériorer encore plus », a dit M. Bouchard.

Selon lui, si Québec excluait les enseignants et les directions d’école du projet de loi, pour interdire qu’aux fonctionnaires ayant un pouvoir coercitif le droit de porter un signe religieux (comme il proposait déjà en 2008), « [le gouvernement] aurait de bonnes chances de convaincre les tribunaux ».

Gérard Bouchard a aussi rappelé qu’il n’existe aucune donnée scientifique qui prouve que le port de signes religieux peut endoctriner des élèves ou les traumatiser. « Il n’y a aucune étude rigoureuse qui permet » d’appuyer cela, a-t-il dit.

Si de telles études existaient, M. Bouchard pourrait même être favorable au projet de loi du gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), a-t-il ajouté mercredi.

Source: Laïcité : «On n’a pas l’air d’une société décente», dit Gérard Bouchard

And some teacher testimony in favour of Bill 21:

Si la cigarette de Lucky Luke ou un homme-sandwich McDonald’s transmettent des messages, les signes religieux le font aussi, ont dénoncé mercredi deux enseignantes invitées aux consultations du projet de loi 21 sur la laïcité de l’État.

Leila Bensalem, une enseignante de la Commission scolaire de Montréal (CSDM), croit que le voile que porte certaines musulmanes « n’est pas un modèle à transmettre [aux] élèves. »

De passage à Québec mercredi, Mme Bensalem était accompagnée de Nadia El-Mabrouk, professeure en informatique à l’Université de Montréal. Les deux femmes ont salué la volonté du gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) d’interdire le port de signes religieux aux employés de l’État en position d’autorité, incluant les enseignants.

« Est-ce qu’il y a des données sur le fait que s’habiller en homme-sandwich McDonald’s, ça fait en sorte que les gens mangent plus de hamburgers ? L’affichage, la publicité, […] ça conditionne les personnes. Si on [en] n’était pas convaincu, […] il n’y aurait pas de publicité », a affirmé Mme El-Mabrouk.

« Les signes religieux [ont] une charge politique, a pour sa part affirmé MmeBensalem. C’est un problème dans une classe. »

Tout comme Djemila Benhabib, mardi, l’enseignante montréalaise considère qu’une enseignante musulmane voilée qui refuserait de retirer son voile, une fois la loi adoptée, serait « intégriste ».

Devant les parlementaires, elle s’est questionnée sur les états d’âme d’une petite fille iranienne dont la famille aurait fui son pays et qui se retrouverait devant une enseignante voilée. « Comment va-t-elle se sentir? », s’est inquiétée MmeBensalem.

« [Et] des élèves palestiniens […] qui ont fui les pratiques de l’État israélien [et] qui feraient face dans une classe à un enseignant qui porte la kippa, [voilà] qui les ramène à toutes ces choses qu’ils ont fuies », a-t-elle ajouté.

Québec « cautionne l’exclusion »

Haroun Bouazzi, porte-parole de l’Association des Musulmans et des Arabes pour la laïcité au Québec, croit pour sa part que le gouvernement Legault « cautionne l’exclusion » avec le projet de loi 21.

« Un gouvernement établit avec ses lois […] ce qui est acceptable ou pas dans une société. Le message est clair ici qu’il est acceptable d’exclure des membres d’une minorité sans raison valable », a-t-il dénoncé mercredi lors de son allocution devant les parlementaires à Québec.

M. Bouazzi a mis au défi le ministre Simon Jolin-Barrette de ne pas appliquer une clause dérogatoire à sa loi et de la laisser être contestée devant les tribunaux.

Plus tard en journée, mercredi, le sociologue Gérard Bouchard témoignera à son tour aux consultations particulières du projet de loi 21. Mardi, son ancien collègue, le philosophe Charles Taylor, a affirmé que le gouvernement Legault semait actuellement la division.

Source: Les signes religieux portent un message, disent des enseignantes

 

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More Immigrants Are Giving Up and Leaving the US

2019/05/10 Leave a comment

Alejandra Garcia Zamarrón, a mother of three American citizens, had lived in the United States for nearly 20 years when a police officer pulled over the unregistered vehicle she was riding in.

Georgia was her home, the place where she’d lived for years and raised her family. But when she found herself locked in the Irwin County Detention Center, she had few options to stay. She’d been brought to the U.S. as a child, but her protected status as a childhood arrival had expired. And she had given a fake name and date of birth to the police officer who stopped her, a misdemeanor that put her at greater risk of deportation.

This story was published in partnership with Politico.

Zamarrón, 32, initially vowed to fight her removal to Mexico as long as she could. But as the months in detention dragged on, she changed her mind and asked for “voluntary departure,” which would allow her to leave the U.S. without a deportation on her record. “My family decided the best bet was for me to leave and fight from the outside,” Zamarrón said in a phone call from the detention center, before she returned to Mexico in November.

The number of immigrants who have applied for voluntary departure has soared since the election of Donald Trump, according to new Justice Department data obtained by The Marshall Project. In fiscal year 2018, the number of applications doubled from the previous year—rising much faster than the 17 percent increase in overall immigration cases, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The numbers show yet another way the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is having an impact: More people are considering leaving the U.S., rather than being stuck in detention or taking on a lengthy legal battle with little hope of success.

Monthly applications for “voluntary departure”

Starting shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration, more and more immigrants facing removal asked to leave the country rather than be deported. Last year, the number who asked immigration courts to be allowed to leave voluntarily more than doubled from the year before.

Last year, voluntary departure applications reached a seven-year high of 29,818 applications. In the Atlanta court, which hears cases of Irwin detainees like Zamarrón, the applications grew nearly seven times from 2016 to 2018.

The increase in applications for voluntary departure could be seen as a win for the Trump administration, which has made it a goal to get undocumented immigrants out of the country and reduce the looming backlog of immigration cases. Indeed, the Justice Department has published the growing number of voluntary departures alongside deportations as a sign of a “return to the rule of law” and that Trump’s approach is working. But it is also a sign of how broad immigration enforcement has become, sweeping up the criminals Trump talks about alongside parents like Zamarrón who have little to no criminal history, as voluntary departure is only open to immigrants without a serious record. When Mitt Romney once shared his plan to have people “self-deport,” he meant it as an alternative to ramping up enforcement power. But the recent spike in voluntary departure has come only with an increase in arrests and in detention.

An application for voluntary departure ultimately has to be approved by an immigration judge. The number of requests granted increased 50 percent in fiscal year 2017, according to data from the Justice Department. (Because not every case is resolved during the year it is filed, and judges can grant voluntary departure without a formal application, the annual total of voluntary departures has exceeded the number of applications.)

Under immigration law, voluntary departure is considered a kind of privilege. If you are deported, you have to wait years to apply for a visa to re-enter the United States, but those who leave voluntarily don’t have the same wait. And you don’t face serious prison time if you are caught without legal status in the U.S.

But voluntary departure is a last resort for many undocumented immigrants, because it means leaving their longtime homes and often their families in the United States without any clear prospect for returning. And those who take the option usually have to pay their own way. Those flights can cost thousands of dollars, because immigration officials require a special kind of ticket that can be changed at any time.

Several factors are probably responsible for the surge in the number of applications for voluntary departure, experts say. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has increasingly gone after immigrants who have no criminal backgrounds—those who are more likely to qualify for voluntary departure. Because of the growing backlog of immigration cases, judges and Department of Homeland Security attorneys may feel pressured to resolve cases quickly and offer voluntary departure instead of dragging out multiple appeals.

“I would definitely think that some of it might be related to judges trying to keep up with their production quotas,” said former immigration judge Paul Wickham Schmidt.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review—the Justice Department office in charge of immigration courts—declined to comment on the increase in applications. “Using metrics to evaluate performance is neither novel nor unique to EOIR,” spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly said in an email. “The purpose of implementing these metrics is to encourage efficient and effective case management while preserving immigration judge discretion and due process.”

ICE spokesperson Brendan Raedy said that many apply for voluntary departure so they don’t have to wait to apply to re-enter the country. “In addition, voluntary departure generally provides far more time to make necessary arrangements than for those who are ordered removed,” he wrote in an email.

Attorney Marty Rosenbluth, who represents clients in the immigration court at the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, said more of his clients from Mexico are considering voluntary departure because of the danger involved in deportation. At Stewart, one of the country’s most remote detention centers, the number of applications last year was 19 times what it had been in 2016. “It’s largely a safety thing,” Rosenbluth said. In deportations, “ICE just dumps you at the border, and you’re on your own,” he said. If they’re granted voluntary departure, individuals are able to fly into Mexico City or closer to home.

Immigrants may also be increasingly aware of voluntary departure as an option, and of the slim chances of winning a case from detention. “Detainees talk to each other,” said Trina Realmuto, a directing attorney for the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration nonprofit. “The one guy fighting his case is going to say, ‘I’ve been here a year and nobody wins.’ There are legal factors, and there’s human factors.”

While Alejandra Garcia Zamarrón has left for Mexico to avoid detention, her youngest daughter is still living in Georgia.

Zamarrón’s request for voluntary departure came as a surprise to her legal team. “She had been saying for months and months, ‘I’m going to fight this,’” said attorney Laura Rivera of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who worked on Zamarrón’s case. “It speaks to the desperation of people in detention that they’d be trying to sign up in droves for this thing that actually causes them to be removed. They’ve got to be thinking that there’s no way out.”

Before she returned to Mexico, Zamarrón said she was driven by the need to have more contact with her family than she was able to have in detention. “When I come out I’ll be able to have more communication with them, FaceTime with them,” she said. “I didn’t want to wait. I’m ready to see my baby’s face.” From Mexico, she recently video-called into her 13-year-old daughter’s baptism. She hopes to apply for a U-Visa as a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault, and at the very least, have her 17-year old son petition to bring her to the United States after he turns 21.

Zamarrón said many of the women she was detained with were also considering voluntary departure. “They’re tired of living in here, of dealing with ICE, dealing with guards, dealing with the injustice … They give up. They’d rather be deported than fight for their case,” she said. “We’re not criminals, we just don’t have options.”

Source: More Immigrants Are Giving Up and Leaving the US

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