Trump signs executive order to cancel student visas of ‘Hamas sympathizers’ who protested Israel’s war in Gaza

2025/01/31 Leave a comment

Already prompting similar calls in Canada, we article on Poilievre comments below:

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order promising “immediate action” from federal law enforcement against noncitizen college students and others in the United States who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations during Israel’s war in Gaza.

The president has pledged to “deport” all “resident aliens” who joined protests, Trump said in a White House fact sheet.

“Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” he vowed.

Trump also pledged to “quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” he claimed.

The Department of Justice will “aggressively” prosecute what it characterizes as “terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews” after “the explosion of antisemitism” on college campuses in the wake of Israel’s campaign, according to the White House.

“It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence,” the executive order states.

As The Independent has reported, both antisemitism and Islamophobic threats and violence surged after Hamas invaded Israel in 2023, kicking off the war in Gaza and widespread protests on U.S. campuses.

Under the order, government agencies have 60 days to produce a report “identifying all civil and criminal authorities or actions” to “curb or combat” antisemitism, with an inventory of complaints “against or involving” antisemitism in colleges and universities.

The U.S. Attorney General is “encouraged to employ appropriate civil rights enforcement authorities” to combat antisemitism, the order states.

Source: Trump signs executive order to cancel student visas of ‘Hamas sympathizers’ who protested Israel’s war in Gaza

Meanwhile in Canada:

FIRST READING: As anti-Israel rallies continue unabated, Poilievre calls for deportations

We see on our own streets antisemitism guided by obscene woke ideologies that have led to an explosion in hate crimes,” Poilievre said in a brief address at the official Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Ottawa.

He then added, “we must not just condemn these things, we must take action against them.”

“We must deport from our country any temporary resident that is here on a permit or a visa that is carrying out violence or hate crimes on our soil.”

Ever since the October 7 Hamas-led terrorist attacks against Israel, Canada has been hit by hundreds of anti-Israel rallies, blockades, and other actions — many of them organized by a handful of openly anti-Zionist groups including Toronto4Palestine, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and student groups such as McGill University’s Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance.

Some of the rallies were initially celebratory, but they quickly shifted to calls for “ceasefire,” often with the claim that Israel was committing genocide.

Now that a Gazan ceasefire has been in place since Jan. 19, rallies have continued unabated, often with calls for Palestinian “resistance” to continue until Israel’s complete destruction.

“The fight isn’t over. In fact, it has just begun,” Toronto4Palestine

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Matthews: Can we at least put a stop to ‘birth tourism’ (USA)?

2025/01/31 Leave a comment

Some useful data in the commentary:

President Trump ignited a flurry of activity with his executive order attempting to stop “birthright citizenship” — the constitutional provision that all children born on U.S. soil (including the territories) automatically become U.S. citizens. Based on the first judge to rule on Trump’s EO, it appears the administration faces an uphill battle in the courts. But whatever the courts decide on birthright citizenship, Americans should at least be able to agree that the practice of “birth tourism” is an abuse of the system and should be stopped.

Birth tourism is when pregnant women from other countries enter the United States for the purpose of having their child, who under the 14th Amendment automatically becomes a U.S. citizen, usually returning home thereafter.

For example, the health policy news site Fierce Healthcare wrote in 2009, “Of late, a growing number of well-to-do Mexican mothers have been coming to the U.S. to have their babies, who automatically get American citizenship since they were born on U.S. soil.” One Arizona medical facility marketed “a ‘birth package’ offering cutting edge technology, cozy settings and the chance for mothers to grant their babies American citizenship.” The facility even posted its (2009) prices: $2,300 for a vaginal birth and $4,600 for a c-section.

While Mexican women may have been the primary offenders in the past, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reported in 2020 that the list of countries has expanded to China, Taiwan, Korea, Nigeria, Turkey, Russia and Brazil. It adds that birth tourism has grown dramatically in some of the U.S. territories, where Chinese citizens can easily obtain visas to visit.

A senior policy director at Georgetown Law’s O’Neill Institute wrote in 2018, “Women from foreign countries, mainly China and Russia, are paying tens of thousands of dollars to temporarily relocate to the U.S. during their pregnancy in order to give birth in the U.S. and thereby guarantee U.S. citizenship for their child.”

The Wall Street Journal adds, “Companies in China have attracted attention in recent years for advertising such services, and airlines in Asia even started turning away some pregnant passengers they suspected of traveling to give birth.”

The federal government tried to limit birth tourism during the first Trump administration. The U.S. Department of State announced in January of 2020, “[T]he Department is amending its B nonimmigrant visa regulation to address birth tourism. Under this amended regulation, U.S. consular officers overseas will deny any B visa application from an applicant whom the consular officer has reason to believe is traveling for the primary purpose of giving birth in the United States to obtain U.S. citizenship for their child.”

It’s unclear how strictly this order has been enforced, especially given President Biden’s lax approach to immigration. But Trump wants to clamp down on the practice again by tightening the criteria to qualify for a tourist visa, the Journal reports.

How many births are we talking about? In 2020 the CIS estimated “that birth tourism results in 33,000 births to women on tourist visas annually.” While that’s a small percentage of the estimated 4.4 million child-citizens born to illegal immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center, it’s still a significant number.

To be sure, there are some key differences between birth tourism and those residing in the U.S. illegally who take advantage of birthright citizenship. Women engaging in birth tourism may be from upper-income families who enter the U.S. or its territories legally on a visa. And those returning with their child to their home country are unlikely to become a drain on taxpayers by signing up for various benefits available to children.

Then why do these women go to the trouble? Apparently, the hope is since their child is a U.S. citizen, they would receive preferential treatment in the future if or when they seek to move to the U.S. But even if one can sympathize with their goal, birth tourism is a flagrant abuse of the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship provision.

The courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court, will determine the merits of Trump’s executive order, but most legal scholars think ending birthright citizenship will take either legislation or a constitutional amendment.

But even if the courts uphold the 14th Amendment’s long-accepted meaning of birthright citizenship, that may not extend to birth tourism.

The Supreme Court permits exceptions and limitations to many of our constitutional rights. You have a Second Amendment right to own a gun. But the courts allow certain venues — e.g., government buildings, schools, commercial airplanes and sports facilities  — to prohibit bringing a gun on the premises.

The best solution is for Congress and the Trump administration to pass comprehensive immigration reform, which could include any limitations or restrictions Congress wants imposed on birthright citizenship. Unfortunately, comprehensive reform is unlikely until Republicans believe they have regained control of the borders. And that may take a while.

Merrill Matthews is a public policy and political analyst and the co-author of “On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.” 

Source: Can we at least put a stop to ‘birth tourism’?

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

Birth tourism rebounds close to pre-pandemic levels in B.C. as Trump takes action in U.S.

2025/01/31 Leave a comment

After falling precipitously during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of births in B.C. from non-residents rebounded significantly in 2024, suggesting a resurrection of the birth tourism cottage industry, says immigration analyst Andrew Griffith.

And, said Griffith, the newly released health data, comes as U.S. President Donald Trump vows — not without controversy — to curb the practice south of the border, raising questions about a likewise response here in Canada.

“The effect on Canada of Trump’s executive order prohibiting birth tourism is unclear but may result in an incoming Conservative government to re-examine the issue,” said Griffith.

The former director general for the Citizenship and Multiculturalism branch of Citizenship and Immigration Canada released this week, via Policy Options, new annual figures on non-resident births across Canada showing 5,219 such births in 2023-24.

That is nearly as many as the record 5,698 seen in 2019-20 and more than double the short-term low of 2,245 experienced in 2021-22.

Between April 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020, 868 non-residents of Canada, excluding temporary foreign workers, refugees and international students, paid to give birth in B.C. hospitals alone.

Last year 513 such births occurred in B.C., up from an average of 152 during the two pandemic-impacted years. B.C. provides public health care (Medical Service Plan) to international students, temporary foreign workers and refugees, who do not factor into the data.

Unique to B.C. was the birth tourism industry in Richmond, as 24 per cent of all births there in 2019-20 were to non-residents on account of a burgeoning birth tourism cottage industry, such as birthing hotels run out of homes for pregnant Chinese nationals on tourist visas.

But that phenomenon appears to have disappeared.

“The decline in visitor visas granted to Chinese nationals is reflected in British Columbia’s Richmond Hospital, once the epicentre of birth tourism, declining from 24 per cent pre-pandemic and only recovered partially to sevent percent in 2023-24,” said Griffith.

Last year the top B.C. hospitals for such births were Richmond (102), Surrey Memorial (99), St.Paul’s/Mount Saint Joseph (97) and Children’s (85).

At issue is the fact birth tourism has raised ethical and practical questions around delivery of health-care services for Canadian women.

Source: Birth tourism rebounds close to pre-pandemic levels in B.C. as Trump takes action in U.S.

Filed under Birth Tourism, Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with

Michael Barutciski: With Trump’s deportations underway, what will Canada’s asylum policy look like? 

2025/01/30 Leave a comment

Useful reminder of limits. But Trump policies undermine the principles underlying the STCA:

In light of the Trump administration’s early moves to deport migrants without legal status in the U.S., there’s been heightened debate here in Canada about how we may (or may not) be positioned to handle a surge of claimants seeking refuge. Beyond the logistical capacity issues of handling high volumes of cases at our border, there are outstanding questions about Canada’s legal obligations to claimants and what, if any, policy and legal scope we have to manage the potential influx. The truth is it is greater than is often understood.

A key source of the confusion is that for years many in Canada have held a false assumption about the legal constraints imposed on our asylum procedures through a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1985, Singh v. Canada. The Globe and Mail’s editorial board recently repeated this mistake, asserting that Canada’s top court decided the Charter guarantees asylum seekers the right to a hearing as soon as they set foot in the country. This misreading of Singh has a real effect on our immigration predicament.

The Supreme Court did establish an important general rule in Singh: all persons who arrive at the border are covered by the Charter, regardless of their immigration status. Yet establishing that the Charter applies is not the same as interpreting the content of these Charter rights in various contexts.

In terms of refugee status determination procedures, the Supreme Court noted in Singh that the claimants, all Sikhs, were going to be sent by Canadian authorities back to their home country. For six of the seven claimants, this meant being returned to India, a country the Court considered dangerous for them given the violent internal tensions at the time. (The other claimant was to be returned to Guyana.)

However, the Supreme Court never generalized by saying that all claimants always have a right to a hearing. That is the exaggerated interpretation encouraged for years by activists and wishful-thinking academics. If claimants come to Canada via a safe third country, such as the U.S., then they can be returned to that country. This is the basic principle at the heart of the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), which the Court accepted last year when it refused to declare the agreement unconstitutional (as activists and academics have been demanding for years).

In other words, dealing with asylum claimants coming from the U.S. is a different situation than the one addressed in Singh and the legal constraints are not the same. This nuance is recognized in both the 1951 Refugee Convention and Canadian legislation. The convention does not even mention anything about hearings. Its most basic protection is the principle of “non-refoulement,” which stipulates that refugees cannot be returned to a country where their “life of freedom would be threatened.” It allows claimants to be returned to safe countries, which is why the adoption of the STCA was possible in the first place.

Section 101 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act specifically includes eligibility clauses that should suggest caution to anyone who believes automatic access to a hearing is part of Canada’s system. There is an initial determination as to whether the migrant is eligible to make a claim, including various security-related grounds of inadmissibility.

Moreover, there is also a clause rendering claimants ineligible when they come “directly or indirectly to Canada from a country designated by the regulations.” This is the legislative provision that enables return to the U.S. Even a cursory reading of the act should make clear that an automatic right to a refugee hearing was never intended or established by Parliament.

Despite these legal provisions, the Liberals have spent years reinforcing the confusion regarding Singh, constantly asserting that asylum seekers trying to enter “irregularly” at Roxham Road had the right to a hearing. When the government’s inaction regarding the illegal crossings led to record numbers of asylum claimants and public anxiety over the lack of border control, the government eventually negotiated an amendment to the STCA that essentially closed Roxham Road. Nobody seemed to notice that the supposed right to a hearing in Canada disappeared.

It is ironic that Prime Minister Trudeau recently acknowledged in the French version of a YouTube video that asylum seekers at Roxham Road were actually abusing the system. This incoherent and unserious approach was again revealed when Immigration Minister Marc Miller repeated the false argument about a supposed unqualified right to a hearing during a press conference explaining the reimposition of visas on Mexican nationals (who he claimed were abusing the asylum system).

After many years of lax asylum policies, followed more recently by continual controversies, there now appears to be an attempt to debate the country’s genuine asylum dilemmas with the Globe’s editorial board suggesting “new thinking is needed.” Most reasonable Canadians realize that tightening the current asylum system in a manner that treats claimants fairly is sufficiently challenging; we do not need to make it even more difficult by inventing legal constraints.

Singh established that asylum seekers in Canada who risk being returned to a dangerous country benefit from a right to a hearing if they claim protection. The corollary is equally important if we are to explore creative solutions to Canada’s asylum problems: there cannot be a Charter violation if asylum seekers are sent to a safe country. Although it will disappoint activists, the future of a sustainable asylum system will inevitably involve extraterritorial procedures and an extension of the safe third-country idea. We need to properly grasp basic legal constraints to make sure these procedures are as fair and humane as possible.

Source: Michael Barutciski: With Trump’s deportations underway, what will Canada’s asylum policy look like?

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Multiculturalism is a bad fit for Quebec, immigration minister says

2025/01/30 Leave a comment

Here we go again. On the positive side, they will need to develop a definition that can be reviewed and assessed:

The minister responsible for immigration has justified the presentation of new legislation on the integration of immigrants by saying he wants to promote a common Quebec culture and less “ghettoization” of new arrivals.

Jean-François Roberge, the minister of immigration, francization and integration, said the legislation he will table Thursday will act as a counterweight to the Canadian concept of multiculturalism, which he said remains a bad fit for Quebec because it fails to clearly define a common culture with principles Quebecers believe in. Newcomers need to clearly understand Quebec is different from the rest of Canada when they arrive, Roberge said.

He said the proof of the need for a new bill, with a focus on the concept of interculturalism, lies in part in new data produced by Quebec’s French language commissioner showing the children of immigrants identify less with Quebec than their parents did.

“There is something broken,” Roberge told reporters at a news conference. “I don’t think we have, at this moment, a clearly defined social contract. We never outlined it. “We can’t criticize people who are not aware of something that has never been clearly defined.

“With our plan, with our bill, we will be pretty clear: We are a nation, we have a culture, we have democratic values, men and women are equal. People coming here must accept that.”

Roberge, however, was vague on how he plans to apply what is for now a statement of principles. The mechanics of how it will be applied will be included in the legislation, he said. He said the bill will revolve around the principle of reciprocity and a “moral obligation to adhere to Quebec culture in the larger sense.”

“We are a welcoming society; we remain open to the world. We want diversity on the Quebec territory, but we want a mix. We don’t want people living apart from one another. We think the ghettoization does not serve social cohesion.”

Roberge dismissed questions about whether the Coalition Avenir Québec government is again stirring up the identity issue as a way to shore up its sliding popularity. He said the CAQ government adopted other pieces of identity legislation, such as Bill 21 on state secularism and Bill 96 overhauling the Charter of the French Language, early in its mandate before the party fell from grace with voters.

“Our values don’t change based on the latest polls,” Roberge said. Roberge made the comments as the National Assembly resumed work Tuesday following the Christmas break.

Much of the focus of the session will be on the economy and the potential impact of U.S. tariffs. Premier François Legault made it clear at a caucus last week that other issues will be on the agenda, including those revolving around identity.

Roberge set the stage for the bill in a video Monday in which he said the new legislation will be a logical followup to Bills 21 and 96. “For the first time in our history, we will define who we are and how we want to continue to evolve as a nation,” Roberge said in the video. “With this bill, we propose a social contract uniting all Quebecers.”

But he was hit with questions about the government’s current inability to offer enough French courses to meet the demand from those arriving here. On the defensive, Roberge said Quebec is teaching the language to more people than ever — 80,000 in 2024 alone — and will improve the situation further in 2025. Waiting lists are long because too many immigrants have arrived in Quebec and he plans to reduce the total in the future, he said.

“Those who are here will be able to learn French and we will put the brakes on new arrivals, including temporary (immigrants), on our territory.”

Quebec’s opposition parties remained skeptical Tuesday about the government’s motives. Interim Liberal leader Marc Tanguay said his party is always open to discussing such issues as interculturalism, but warned the new bill has to respect fundamental rights. He said the government also has to put up the money to back its principles, which he said it has not done in the past.

“I think the first person who spoke of interculturalism was (former Liberal premier) Robert Bourassa in the ‘70s,” Tanguay said. “We are interculturalists and ready to work on this, but again the devil is in the details. We must not divide (Quebecers).”

Québec solidaire co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal said there is an “incoherence” in Roberge’s message because he says immigrants need to integrate, yet the government keeps cutting French courses.

Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said that while he doesn’t believe everything in the new bill will be useless, the CAQ’s track record on immigration remains questionable because of its lack of results. “Let’s just say the CAQ has been good at window-dressing for the past seven years, so we’ll keep an eye on that,” St-Pierre Plamondon told reporters.

Source: Multiculturalism is a bad fit for Quebec, immigration minister says

Filed under Integration, Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Galston | Trump’s Attack on Birthright Citizenship

2025/01/30 Leave a comment

Good informative commentary:

James C. Ho, the son of immigrants from Taiwan and a naturalized U.S. citizen, received a juris doctor with high honors in 1999 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he joined the Federalist Society. He went on to work in the private sector, in the Justice Department and as a legal adviser to subcommittees of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Between 2005-06, he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. In 2008 he became solicitor general of Texas, succeeding Ted Cruz, who became one of his strongest supporters in the U.S. Senate. 

In October 2017, President Trump nominated Mr. Ho to fill a seat on the Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans. The Senate confirmed Mr. Ho two months later. In late 2020, Mr. Trump included Judge Ho on a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, where he reportedly remains today.

Judge Ho is a staunch cultural conservative. He supports an expansive understanding of religious liberty and in 2022 publicly pledged not to hire law clerks from Yale Law School, charging that the school not only tolerates but actively practices cancel culture. He vigorously opposes illegal immigration, arguing that a country that can’t control its borders isn’t fully sovereign. 

But Judge Ho is also the author of a 2006 legal article that strongly argued in favor of birthright citizenship, including for the children of illegal immigrants. In support of his conclusion, he cited the text and history of the 14th Amendment as well as the key cases—U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) and Plyler v. Doe (1982)—in which the Supreme Court has interpreted its application. In Plyler, he noted, all nine justices endorsed the proposition that illegal immigrants are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. This matters because the 14th Amendment establishes being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. as the threshold qualification for children born in the U.S. to be citizens at birth. Mr. Ho ended his legal paper by dubbing efforts to eliminate birthright citizenship “Dred Scott II.”

In October 2017, President Trump nominated Mr. Ho to fill a seat on the Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans. The Senate confirmed Mr. Ho two months later. In late 2020, Mr. Trump included Judge Ho on a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, where he reportedly remains today.

Judge Ho is a staunch cultural conservative. He supports an expansive understanding of religious liberty and in 2022 publicly pledged not to hire law clerks from Yale Law School, charging that the school not only tolerates but actively practices cancel culture. He vigorously opposes illegal immigration, arguing that a country that can’t control its borders isn’t fully sovereign. 

But Judge Ho is also the author of a 2006 legal article that strongly argued in favor of birthright citizenship, including for the children of illegal immigrants. In support of his conclusion, he cited the text and history of the 14th Amendment as well as the key cases—U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) and Plyler v. Doe (1982)—in which the Supreme Court has interpreted its application. In Plyler, he noted, all nine justices endorsed the proposition that illegal immigrants are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. This matters because the 14th Amendment establishes being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. as the threshold qualification for children born in the U.S. to be citizens at birth. Mr. Ho ended his legal paper by dubbing efforts to eliminate birthright citizenship “Dred Scott II.”

Until recently, Judge Ho’s article was of academic interest only. No longer. On day one of his second term, Mr. Trump issued an executive order aimed at eliminating birthright citizenship for children born to mothers who are present in the U.S. illegally or temporarily—unless the father is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident at the time of the birth. In response to suits filed by multiple states, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction against the executive order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.” 

If a higher court disagrees, this dispute will almost certainly end up at the Supreme Court. What then? If the justices follow Judge Ho’s argument—or their own prior rulings—Mr. Trump will lose. But in an interview last November after Mr. Trump’s election victory, Judge Ho offered the court an escape hatch. “Birthright citizenship obviously doesn’t apply in case of war or invasion,” he said. “No one to my knowledge has ever argued that the children of invading aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship.” If Mr. Trump’s characterization of mass illegal immigration as an invasion is legally correct, Judge Ho implies, the executive order could be upheld.

But is it an invasion? Enter the Texas Public Policy Foundation, not exactly a band of never-Trumpers. This staunchly conservative organization was headed by Kevin Roberts before he left to become president of the Heritage Foundation. Brooke Rollins, who founded the America First Policy Institute and is Mr. Trump’s nominee to head the Agriculture Department, is a senior adviser to the Texas foundation’s board. 

In November 2022, the foundation issued a report: “The Meaning of Invasion Under the Compact Clause of the U.S. Constitution.” After a careful textual, legal and historical inquiry, the report rightly concluded that the term invasion involves two core concepts—entry plus enmity. “Entry alone, which is trespass, is not sufficient to constitute an invasion,” the report concluded. While some nonstate actors, such as cartel-affiliated gangs, may fall under the category of invaders, most illegal entrants don’t. By itself, “the unlawful entry of people into the United States cannot be construed as an invasion.” Thus, Mr. Trump’s use of the term to characterize the situation at the southern border is a metaphor without legal validity or force. The report slams shut Mr. Ho’s proposed escape hatch. 

If the Supreme Court agrees to accept the cases challenging the executive order, the justices will face a choice: They can follow the text and history of the 14th Amendment as well as the court’s past decisions, or they can disregard logic and common sense to give the president what he wants, as they did in their decision on the scope of presidential immunity.

Many Americans have come to view the court as dominated by politics rather than nonpartisan jurisprudence. The court’s decision on birthright citizenship will either accelerate this decline in public trust or begin the long process of reversing it.

Source: Opinion | Trump’s Attack on Birthright Citizenship

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Birth Tourism Update: Spillover from Trump?

2025/01/30 Leave a comment

My latest update. Curious to see if this prompts or not discussion in Canada and whether or not a likely Conservative government decides to revisit the issue:

Birth tourism has risen to pre-pandemic levels after it dropped in half during the shutdowns of COVID-19. In the U.S., Donald Trump has set about trying to end birthright citizenship. What impact his plan might here have remains to be seen. But birth tourism is an issue the next federal government may need to re-examine….

Source: Le tourisme de naissance a doublé depuis la fin de la pandémie, Birth tourism has doubled since the pandemic lull

Filed under Birth Tourism, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Trump bump: U.S. citizenship renunciation inquiries surge in Canada, lawyers say

2025/01/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

…Alexander Marino, director of U.S. tax law at Moodys Tax Law in Calgary, said that most people renounce U.S. citizenship for tax reasons — the U.S. is one of the few countries that imposes tax based on citizenship, not residency.

This often involves expensive reporting and filing obligations that include estate and gift taxes, even after death.

Marino is also expecting a Trump bump in business.

“I can’t deny that most U.S. expats, in my experience, tend to be more left-leaning than right-leaning. For a lot of people, the election results are a bit of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Marino said.

“We’re seeing a bump due to the election results.”

Marino said he has seen year-over-year demand increase since specializing in renunciation 12 years ago.

He said the spike in interest now is greater than in 2017 after Trump’s first presidential win, and he expected 2025 to see a record number of people try to give up U.S. citizenship.

Moodys typically offers five to seven renunciation information webinars each year for U.S. citizens living in Canada; this year, they may schedule up to 12, Marino said.

Anyone giving up U.S. citizenship shouldn’t expect the matter to be secret — the U.S. Federal Register publishes quarterly lists of everyone who has surrendered their citizenship. In May 2014, the list named singer Tina Turner, and in February 2017, future British prime minister Boris Johnson.

There were only a few hundred names on the lists in 2005, but numbers have risen sharply since 2014, when the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act went into full effect. It requires that foreign financial institutions report on the foreign assets held by U.S. account holders.

In 2016, about 4,100 names were listed, but the next year, in Trump’s first year in the White House, numbers jumped by more than 50 per cent to about 6,900 names….

Source: Trump bump: U.S. citizenship renunciation inquiries surge in Canada, lawyers say

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Canada’s international student boom changed Brampton forever. As the program scales back dramatically, a strained community tries to adapt

2025/01/29 Leave a comment

Interesting deep dive regarding international students living in Brampton:

…Santos said the city first noticed the number of international students “growing significantly” in 2021 during the pandemic, mostly through reports of an increased number of illegal basement apartments and exponential use of food banks in the community.

At the time, the city helped organize an international student roundtable, summit and charter to discuss the challenges facing international solutions and bring together community leaders — and commit to finding solutions.

Local colleges have been supportive of the efforts, but she said the bigger issue has been all the students who live in Brampton but study elsewhere.

“One of the things we have advocated for is that student visas should be tied to their place of residence, not just their place of study,” said Santos, as it’s the local municipality that has to bear the cost of providing services for the residents, not the place where they might attend school.

The councillor has also asked the province increase the “heads and beds” levy, which sees the province pay municipalities $75 per person annually for those attending colleges and universities in lieu of property taxes to compensate for the cost of services like transit, roads, sewers, parks and recreation. Santos, in line with other municipal groups, has pushed for a doubling of that rate, and also asked that that the money be paid to the municipality where students live as opposed to where they are registered to study.

In Kaur’s case, for example, Toronto would receive the levy — even though she lives in Brampton. 

The city has also launched a residential rental licensing pilot program, aimed at targeting landlords who rent out rooms that are unsafe to students. The program allows bylaw officers to issue fines, but some landlords and critics say the licensing has made it more difficult for students to find any housing at all.

More recently, Santos said she has heard of dozens of cases of sex trafficking among students who have been forced to work as prostitutes in exchange for a place to live. But she said the data on the issue is scarce as most students are too scared to speak up, out of shame and the fear of having their student visas cancelled.

Fears of an ‘underclass’

In November, Brampton council passed a motion asking the federal and provincial governments for more support for students.

The motion asks to expand funding eligibility to allow international students to access existing regional supports, to increase the number of hours they can work in a week to 40 (from the federally mandated 24 hours a week), so students can access legal work from employers. It also asks for money to support a three-year pilot project that offers culturally responsive support around settlement, housing, employment and mental health.

Gurpreet Malhotra, the CEO of Indus Community Service, a settlement agency that supports Indo-Canadians, said the organization is working on the pilot project, and sent a proposal to federal immigration minister Marc Miller at a meeting in November. The two parties met this week.

“Our goal is to advocate with higher levels of government to ensure a better experience for these international students so they can settle and become unscarred and productive members of our community,” said Malhotra.

He said he fears it will lead to the “creation of an underclass,” if things continue as is.  

“When you are working under the table, and living under the table and don’t have access to social services, you have a built-in vulnerability to criminal and other negative activities,” he said.

Brown said while the federal and provincial governments have started to change policy in reaction to a growing backlash across the country, few are talking about how to support those who are already here.

“The question is, are those international students going to try to become permanent residents or are those students going to try to return home, and I don’t think we have clarity on that yet,” he said.

That’s why some local officials say the impact of the federal policies — particularly student caps — will be felt less in Brampton.

“Brampton will be the last place where the number of international students will go down,” said Toor, adding that many students have ties to the community and will opt to stay here.

But he’s unsure of how the city will manage in the long run. “This is not something we can absorb, as a city,” said Toor. “Just the scale of the population increase is immense for the city to handle it all — without planning for it.”

Source: Canada’s international student boom changed Brampton forever. As the program scales back dramatically, a strained community tries to adapt

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CIBC Tal on NPRs: Short-term pain, long-term gain

2025/01/29 Leave a comment

Interesting take and does have provide a logic for regularization. But the devil will be in the details: “If as a society we manage to create the conditions for better integration of NPRs in the labour market over time, we should be able to reverse the negative trajectory in productivity growth of the past few years.”

àWhat conditions, how to establish, how to enforce:

…Due to the recent government response, the pace of NPR arrivals is expected to slow down notably in the coming years, although not by as much as predicted by official numbers. For reasons we have spelled out elsewhere, policymakers and analysts cannot assume that the over one million current temporary residents in Canada with expired visas will simply leave the country over the next two years.

In other words, the demographic change of the past few years is not about to reverse. Economic theory and common sense suggest that that is a good thing. After all, an aging population is viewed as a major drag on productivity in most OECD countries. The youth dividend enjoyed by Canada is unique. Yes, clearly it has been too much of a good thing in a very short period of time.

But from a longer-term perspective, retaining and integrating current immigrants and NPRs would result in stronger potential growth and improved productivity, as more new arrivals find employment closer to their skill level or add to their skillset. If as a society we manage to create the conditions for better integration of NPRs in the labour market over time, we should be able to reverse the negative trajectory in productivity growth of the past few years.

Source: NPRs: Short-term pain, long-term gain

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