The core Isis manual that twisted Islam to legitimise barbarity | The Guardian

2018/05/14 Leave a comment

Horrific:

The jihadist manual behind the brutality that underpinned Islamic State has been revealed for the first time in new analysis of a 579-page text, written by the Isis ideologue Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir.

The text attempts to legitimise the barbarous acts of the jihadist group, including the mutilation of corpses, the trade in human organs, beheading, the killing of children along with “scorched earth operations” and global terrorist attacks.

After two years examining and transcribing the document, experts at the counter-extremist group Quilliam have completed a meticulous appraisal of the extremists’ core textbook along with a robust theological rebuttal of its “twisted” interpretation of Islamic teachings. Used by Isis and its supporters to validate a large range of horrific acts, the “bible for jihadists” provided the theoretical and legal framework for the violent terrorist group.

“There is a startling lack of study and concern regarding this abhorrent and dangerous text in almost all western and Arab scholarship,” says the report. “We hope to expose and deconstruct this unprepossessing yet deeply insidious and pernicious text.”

Known as the Fiqh al-Dima (or The Jurisprudence of Blood), the book is the key Salafi-jihadist text. It attempts to justify the use of weapons of mass destruction, perpetrating genocide, the murder of non-combatants, the taking of sex slaves and hostages.

Researchers for Quilliam managed to acquire a copy of the manual online in 2015, after researchers spotted the Fiqh al-Dima being used to teach new recruits to Isis’s caliphate in Syria. Back then, Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate encompassed vast swaths of Syria and Iraq and a population of up to eight million. Since then the group has lost 98% of territory in the two countries and is now largely confined to a strip of desert straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border.

The manual offers the group guidance on “military retreat” with a chapter devoted to “surrender vs fighting to the death” that says jihadists should choose death instead of handing themselves over to the enemy.

However, Sheikh Salah al-Ansari, a senior Quilliam researcher who translated the manual from Arabic and wrote the rebuttal, said no religious requirement existed to “fight to the death” and that the Islamic tradition of warfare encouraged the humane treatment of prisoners of war. “Our work comprehensively debunks and rejects Isis’s proto-Islamic arguments, demonstrating their ignorance and disregard for traditional Islamic scholarship as well as for the basic humane and Islamic values of mercy and compassion,” said Ansari.

The titles of the text’s 20 chapters include “Beheading, decapitation and mutilation”, “Kidnapping warring infidels” and “How to kill spies”.

Another chapter, titled “Indiscriminate killing of warring infidels”, opens with an inflammatory message that calls for force to be used against unbelievers: “Kill them, fight them by every means that may snatch away their souls, drive their spirits from their bodies, cleansing the earth of their filth and removing their scourge from mankind, whatever that means may be.”

A separate chapter documents attempts to justify the use of weapons of mass destruction. “The central aim for which we strive – and we do so with all available strength – is the acquisition of weapons, weapons of mass destruction, for there is no escaping the obligation to defend against these defiant perverters of faith and end the aggression of the malodorous filth against Islam and its people,” writes Muhajir, the Isis author.

Each point he makes is theologically rebutted by Quilliam using the Qur’an, Islamic teachings and reference to acts prohibited by Islamic warfare ethics and Islamic morality. “This text offers intricate details on the use of jihad in its traditional Sunni discussion, and misuses these features to provide Islamic legal cover to terrorist operations,” said Ansari.

Among one of its central strands is the distinction between the “lands of Islam” and the “lands of unbelief (kufr)” and the notion that jihadists are entitled to fight the unbelievers.

“This entire binary construct is a later invention of Muslim theologians that is now obsolete, and so the justification of excommunication (takfir) and military attacks against civilians on this basis is completely absurd,” says the Quilliam report. Even so, Ansari said history had proved that some were swayed by the text, even chapters 11 and 12, which attempt to provide an Islamic sanction for the mutilation of bodies, the cutting of body parts and beheading.

“A susceptible and vulnerable reader who has no previous training in Islamic jurisprudence might easily become seduced by this book because it is written in a way that gives the impression that it has religious weight. While the text is somewhat based on traditional readings, it does not reflect the diverse and pluralistic complexities of Islamic rulings,” said Ansari.

The jihadis’ interpretation of jihad – the text has also been used by al-Qaida and Nigeria’s militant Islamist group, Boko Haram, to justify and commit atrocities – would have been core teachings to Isis’s 6,000 European Muslims who travelled to the calpihate, of which about 850 were British.

“They would have been introduced to this book, it is their bible, their most important text,” said Ansari.

via The core Isis manual that twisted Islam to legitimise barbarity | World news | The Guardian

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Nazi Salutes and Fascist Chic Put Ukraine’s Jews on Edge

2018/05/14 Leave a comment

Worth noting:

At the Bingo nightclub, a few hundred Ukrainian music fans were celebrating the anniversary of their favorite very white ultra-nationalist metal band, Sokyra Peruna. Some were teens, some looked like they were in their 40s. They were dressed up and tatted up with Nazi symbols, pagan spirit designs and emblems from the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine.

Some fans brought their children along. Smoke wafted over the stage, guitars rocked, and dozens of right hands straitened up in Hitler salutes as the band’s leader, Arseny Klimachev, roared out neo-Nazi lines he’s made famous in Ukraine’s capital: “Heroes of my race! Heroes of your race!”

The fans will tell you these rants and symbols, banned in Ukraine by law, are really just fashion statements, a part of their sub-culture. But the Jewish population of Ukraine, estimated to be more than 200,000, is more than uneasy about such demonstrations. To them, Hitler’s fans are not just lovers of heavy metal music, but one more manifestation of a hostile, increasingly powerful movement.

For decades both Russians and Ukrainians referred to their enemies as “fascists,” and caricatured enemies as Hitler. During Moscow’s conflict with Tbilisi in 2007 and 2008 Russian propagandists painted Hitler-style mustaches on the face of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Today millions of Ukrainians refer to Russian President Vladimir Putin as to “Putler”–you can even buy souvenir toilet paper that says that. But if Putin is as bad as Hitler, what are Ukrainian Hitler fans thinking?

Meanwhile, Kremlin officials insist that the pro-European Maidan movement was “fascist,” and that Ukraine is now ruled by neo-Nazi government. And, as if to confirm the Moscow line, dozens of far-right movements, groups, bands use Nazi symbols and praise Hitler’s violence against Bolsheviks, “the occupants of Ukraine.”

Just a few days before the 73d anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazism in World War II, Ukraine saw a march of ultra-nationalists who proclaimed that Odessa should be cleansed of Jews. At the rally, the head of the Right Sector in Odessa, Tatiana Soikina, said: “We are sure that we can put things in order, so Ukraine will belong to Ukrainians and not to Yids, not to oligarchs, glory to Ukraine!”

The march took place several days after the U.S. Congress sent a letter to the State Department describing the  “unacceptable” situation with anti-Semitism in here (PDF). It noted that Ukraine was “glorifying Nazi collaborators and made it a criminal offense to deny their ‘heroism.’” Among those Nazi collaborators the American members of congress cited Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) for killing Jews and Poles in the years from 1941 to 1945.

In fact, all those historical figures mentioned in the letter are seen by many in Ukraine as heroes, even though today Ukraine gets more support from Washington than ever.
Washington is selling Javelin anti-tank systems to Kiev to reenforce the Ukrainian army in the war against Russia-backed rebels in Donbas. The four-year-long conflict has taken more than 10,000 Ukrainian lives.

Far-right activists insist that every single anti-Semitic action has the Kremlin’s agents behind it, while representatives of the Jewish community want to see the conspicuous fans of Hitler put in jail.

“Anti-Semitism is rapidly growing all over Ukraine: Holocaust memorials are vandalized every week, while the opposition say President Petro Poroshenkois ‘a Jew,’ when they want to say that the president is bad,” says Eduard Dolinsky, the head of Ukraine’s Jewish Committee.

Dolinsky, a prominent public figure in Ukraine, monitors incidents of anti-Semitism. The Jewish Committee has demanded that the government and law enforcement agencies push for punishment of those professing Nazi ideology, but so far there has been none.

Dolinsky says he is upset that both Russian propaganda and some Ukrainian media outlets use his name and voice for political agendas as each tries to put the fascist brand on the other. “Our main intention at the Jewish Committee is not to allow history to repeat itself. Today in public opinion Jews seem to be to blame for political failures, just as it happened in Germany in 1930s,” Dolinsky told The Daily Beast.

Earlier this month, the deputy director of Lviv school Number 100, Mariana Batyuk, was fired after posting photographs of herself and her school students lined up and saluting, “Heil Hitler.” The teacher also posted Hitler’s portrait on her Facebook page with a caption: “He was a great man, whatever you say.”

A Ukrainian nationalist, Sergei Parkhomenko from the “Anti-Putin Information Front” insists that real Ukrainian patriots could not attack Jews. “Both Odessa activists and the Lviv teacher and those who vandalized Holocaust memorials must have been paid by either the Kremlin’s agents or those who want to discredit Ukraine,” Parkhomenko told The Daily Beast.

Far-right militia units recently marching across Kiev and promising to bring “order” to Ukraine sounded threatening, and not many people wanted to get in the way of muscled-up guys with black masks covering their faces.

“The other day I was invited to a round table at a TV show to debate with far-right politicians, I had the opportunity to bring two people with me, but all my friends were too scared to go,” Dolinsky told The Daily Beast.

Reporters of the Zaborona media (translates as “banned” media) group of Ukrainian journalists covering forbidden, censored and sensitive news, took photographs of young men slamming during the concert, pushing each other, showing off Nazi and Ku Klux Klan symbols tattooed on their naked torsos.

One of the fans went from one corner of the club to another unfurling his big Nazi flag. Anna Belous, a Zaborona reporter, told The Daily Beast.

“It is stupid to blame everything on the Kremlin. Officials should admit that we do actually have guys using Nazi symbols in Ukraine,” Yekaterina Sergatskova, the founder of the Zaborona project, told us. “Every year  thousands of people with far-right views participate in Povstanets festival, this is not a news.”

Last week President Petro Poroshenko condemned the increasing anti-Semitism as “unacceptable” in a post on his Facebook page. But the dance goes on.

Source: Nazi Salutes and Fascist Chic Put Ukraine’s Jews on Edge

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Jordan Peterson’s Hitler And Holocaust Obsessions – The Forward

2018/05/14 Leave a comment

Interesting and I find nuanced profile of Peterson. But equally true, fairly or unfairly, one is judged by the company one keeps and one’s supporters:

Jordan Peterson is a public intellectual adored by neo-Nazis, white supremacists and conspiracy theorists. The neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer called Peterson, a Canadian psychology professor-turned-self-help-guru, “The Savior of Western Civilization.” Paul Joseph Watson, a prominent conspiracy theorist for Infowars, has tweeted, “Jordan Peterson for Canadian Prime Minister.”

Part of why people on the far right like Peterson is because he is not afraid to talk about the Jews, and he has a lot of people to talk to. Peterson is on a 50-city tour of North America and Europe to promote his best-selling new book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.” His YouTube channel has over a million subscribers. He has answered questions about global Jewish influence several times, in person and online. In an April blog post, he attributed that alleged influence to Jewish intelligence —an old anti-Semitic dog whistle.

Yet Peterson rarely speaks about anti-Semitism itself, even though he says he’s been obsessed with the Holocaust since he was a teenager and lectures on it frequently. Critics say this omission may encourage anti-Semitism among Peterson’s followers, who range from avowed neo-Nazis communities like the Daily Stormer to frustrated young men looking for a scapegoat. In an interview, Peterson told the Forward he feels that he is battling anti-Semitism through his work.

“Part of your responsibility when you have a platform like that, especially when you present yourself as an academic, is to make sure that you’re giving those audiences the full truth,” said Jared Holt, a researcher for People for the American Way who studies far-right media. If Peterson were to be more forthcoming about the importance of anti-Semitism in the Holocaust, it “might allow some of his viewers to think about course correcting,” Holt added.

Peterson, 55, used to be an ordinary academic at the University of Toronto. His first and only other book, published in 1999, was a 600-page tome chiefly about Jungian psychology. He taught at Harvard in the 1980s before moving to Toronto; back then, his “audience” was his students. Now, he posts lectures on everything from Palestine to parenting, the Book of Genesis to psychobiology, on YouTube. Supporters gave him $70,000 through the website Patreon in April 2017, compared with $700 in April 2016. “12 Rules For Life” has sold over 700,000 copies since its publication in January, the Washington Post reported.

Peterson didn’t reach these heights because of his discourses on Jewish topics. His primary preoccupation is healing broken masculinity, and his main following is the young men with whom such a focus resonates. Peterson is nowhere near as toxic as various other internet cultures, like the “incels” who blame women — and sometimes murder them — because they’re not having sex. Yet behind the father figure role he affects lie darker preoccupations with Hitler, Marxists and the “radical left” on college campuses. That’s where his teachings can provide fodder for conspiracy theorists and bigots.

Peterson opposes Jew hatred, he says, and claims that leftist members of the media tried to hurt him by linking him to white supremacists. He has accused white supremacists of having a “pathology of racial pride,” and written that “identity politics” –- the idea that drives white nationalism — is “misguided.”

Peterson told the Forward he felt he had to answer the question of Jewish influence in order to undermine the far right’s anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Other scholars don’t think that’s a sound strategy.

He has addressed the subject several times in public and online, most recently in a blog post published on his website, when he talked about Jewish IQ. It’s higher than average, he said, and that’s true also for people in power. Therefore Jews are accurately represented among the cultural and financial elite of the world. Peterson didn’t mention anti-Semitism directly in this lecture, but he was thinking about it, he said.

“You can assume that they [Jews] are intelligent and have a culture of learning, or you can think that there’s some kind of cabal,” Peterson told the Forward. “So if I’m gonna hit the hornets nest, I might as well hit it on the side that takes the wind out of the sails of far-righters and their idiot anti-Semitism.”

Peterson’s willingness to answer questions about “Jewish success” and his interest in IQ literature is “suspicious” said Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of history at Emory University and author of “Denying the Holocaust,” who won a libel case in Britain against prominent Holocaust denier David Irving.

Lipstadt said that Peterson’s statements on Jewish intelligence reminded her of Kevin MacDonald, a professor of psychology who the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as “the neo-Nazi movement’s favorite academic.” MacDonald has written several books criticizing Jewish intellectual culture. (Peterson links to a critique of one of MacDonald’s books at the end of his blog post on Jewish intelligence.) Lipstadt said that MacDonald’s academic language obscures the anti-Semitism behind his opinions. She worries the same is true of Peterson.

“It’s not [Holocaust] denial, but when people start asking questions like that, I begin to get leery,” Lipstadt said. “The question is, is he a self-help guru who find the Holocaust a convenient way of attracting attention, or is there serious thought going on here?”

Likewise, Lipstadt wonders why Peterson rarely mentions anti-Semitism in his work on the Holocaust. Peterson more often attributes the cause of the Holocaust to human nature.

“Anyone who really diminishes the importance of anti-Semitism — who says, ‘Oh it was an afterthought, a cover’ — I think has got it wrong,” she said.

Peterson says he has been preoccupied with the Holocaust since he was a teenager. He once told an audience that he wrote an essay about Auschwitz at age 13. In “Maps of Meaning,” his 1999 book, he writes that he based his career on trying to understand what drove fascist regimes like the Nazis. “I could not make sense of the human propensity for belief-inspired violence,” he wrote.

Peterson thinks that peer pressure is nearly always stronger than one’s inner moral compass. Anyone has it within them to be Hitler if given enough power, he claims.

“If you think that you wouldn’t be tempted by having 20 million people worship you, then you don’t know yourself at all,” Peterson told the Forward.

He also believes almost anyone would have become a Nazi if they were a German living under Hitler — that “everyone participated” in the Holocaust.

“His audience is without a doubt a large chunk of people in the ‘alt-right,’ and that’s the kind of signaling that would appeal to them,” said Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “If you play fast and loose with the issue, you’re going to be seen as a possible ally in Holocaust denial.”

Peterson admits he has a dim view of human nature. But he has a much rosier picture of humanity’s potential to learn from its mistakes. He believes that sufficient Holocaust education is the key to preventing genocide. In fact, he says, the reason genocides continue to happen is that Holocaust education is not good enough. People don’t understand that it was a feature, not a bug, of human behavior.

“It hasn’t been transformed into deep and practical psychological knowledge,” Peterson added. “You can tell by the rise of publicly accepted anti-Semitism in the last five-to-10 years. Whatever we understood of that education, it wasn’t enough.”

Holocaust education is not a silver bullet, according to Sander Gilman, a professor of history at Emory University who has written extensively about anti-Semitism. Teaching about Nazism and the Holocaust is extremely important, Gilman said. But it doesn’t explain – and can’t prevent – modern anti-Semitism.

“If you have a fantasy that that is going to be a kind of vaccination against hate, that’s wonderfully naïve,” Gilman said. “The rise of anti-Semitism today has to do with situations today.”

Joe Flanders, an assistant professor of psychology at McGill University who was mentored by Peterson as an undergraduate, says that Peterson is “bizarrely preoccupied” by the Holocaust, along with the Cold War. But he pushed back against the possibility that Peterson’s views were evidence of any anti-Semitic feeling.

“He’s interested in how it’s possible for something so evil to manifest in the world,” Flanders said. “It’s an expression of the darkest part of humanity, which we don’t have access to now in the news cycle we consume these days.”

Peterson has repeatedly said that instead of being suspicious of Jews, the world should be grateful that there are so many Jewish geniuses.

“They’re a resource you don’t want to squander,” he said.

via Jordan Peterson’s Hitler And Holocaust Obsessions – The Forward

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

When Kelly says these immigrants can’t fit in, historians hear ‘echo of the past’

2018/05/14 Leave a comment

Great selection of historical quotes:
The similarity was so striking, it made Alan Kraut laugh.

“It’s like an echo from the past,” the American University history professor said after hearing the latest description of undocumented immigrants from a top White House official.

Chief of staff John Kelly told NPR this week that the majority of people who illegally cross into the US are uneducated and don’t have the skills they need to assimilate.

“This is almost a verbatim quotation of what critics of immigration said in the early 20th century,” said Kraut, “often about the Italians and the Poles.”

The professor, who’s writing a book about the long history of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, was among a number of scholars who noted that Kelly’s assertion had a familiar ring.

Maria Cristina Garcia, a professor of American studies at Cornell University, said a few parallel quotes from the 1890s to 1930s come to mind.

“Comparable statements can be found throughout U.S. history,” Garcia wrote in an email to CNN, “but some of the most interesting come from the turn of the 20th century, when many Americans were calling for restrictive immigration quotas (or outright bars) on people they considered ‘undesirable’: paupers, political radicals, the illiterate, the physically and mental infirm, and people from certain regions of the world.”

Here’s a look at what Kelly said — and some past critiques of immigrant groups:

2018
“The vast majority of the people that move illegally into United States are not bad people. They’re not criminals. They’re not MS-13. Some of them are not. But they’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society. They’re overwhelmingly rural people in the countries they come from — 4th, 5th, 6th grade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak English; obviously that’s a big thing. They don’t speak English. They don’t integrate well. They don’t have skills. They’re not bad people. They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws.”
– White House chief of staff John Kelly on undocumented immigrants

1924
“The character of immigration has changed and the newcomers are imbued with lawless, restless sentiments of anarchy and collectivism. They arrive to find their hopes too high, the land almost gone and themselves driven to drown into the cities and struggle for a living. Then anarchy becomes rife among them.”
– Rep. Albert Johnson, one of the architects of the act that placed national origins quotas on immigration

“I would build a wall of steel, a wall as high as Heaven, against the admission of a single one of those Southern Europeans who never thought the thoughts or spoke the language of a democracy in their lives.”
– Georgia Gov. Clifford Walker at a Ku Klux Klan rally

1914
“Observe immigrants not as they come travel-wan up the gang-plank, nor as they issue toil-begrimed from pit’s mouth or mill gate, but in their gatherings, washed, combed, and in their Sunday best. You are struck by the fact that from ten to twenty per cent, are hirsute, low-browed, big-faced persons of obviously low mentality. Not that they suggest evil. They simply look out of place in black clothes and stiff collar, since clearly they belong in skins, in wattled huts at the close of the Great Ice Age. These oxlike men are descendants of those who always stayed behind.”
– Edward Alsworth Ross, “The Old World in the New”

1896
“While the people who for 250 years have been migrating to America have continued to furnish large numbers of immigrants to the United States, other races of totally different race origin, with whom the English-speaking people have never hitherto been assimilated or brought in contact, have suddenly begun to immigrate to the United States in large numbers. Russians, Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians, Italians, Greeks, and even Asiatics, whose immigration to America was almost unknown twenty years ago, have during the last twenty years poured in in steadily increasing numbers, until now they nearly equal the immigration of those races kindred in blood or speech, or both, by whom the United States has hitherto been built up and the American people formed. This momentous fact is the one which confronts us today, and if continued, it carries with it future consequences far deeper than any other event of our times. It involves, in a word, nothing less than the possibility of a great and perilous change in the very fabric of our race.”
– Henry Cabot Lodge speaking before Congress

1753
“Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation. … Few of their children in the Country learn English. … In short unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious.”
– Benjamin Franklin on German immigrants

Source: When Kelly says these immigrants can’t fit in, historians hear ‘echo of the past’

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

USA: Data Points to Wide Gap in Asylum Approval Rates at Nation’s Immigration Courts

2018/05/12 Leave a comment

Similar to what some of the research by Sean Rehaag has shown in Canada with the IRB:

Years of data from immigration courts around the United States and compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University show that whether or not a person seeking asylum is granted that request depends more on where they live and appear before an immigration court judge than it does on the facts of the case.

The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit closely tracked the asylum results at every U.S. immigration court over the past three years and found a wide variation in the number of asylum approvals depending upon the court; in some instances the rate varies as much as 75 percentage points.

From 2016 through the first part of 2018, immigration courts in Los Angeles and San Francisco consistently ranked in the nation’s top 15 courts when it comes to the number of asylum requests granted. Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, New York and Boston were also in the top 15 each year. Court data show each of those courts grants asylum requests more than 50 percent of the time.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, U.S. immigration courts that are vastly less likely to approve asylum petitions include Atlanta, Lumpkin, Georgia, Charlotte, Dallas and Houston. In some of those courts, asylum is granted around 20 percent of the time. In other jurisdictions, like the court in Lumpkin, judges grant asylum only 10 percent of the time.

This disparity has led many observers—from academic researchers, to judges, to the very lawyers appearing before the immigration court judges—to worry that political beliefs could be getting in the way of justice in America’s immigration courts.

“There’s something going on that is very, very troubling,” said Karen Musalo, director at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the UC Hastings School of Law in San Francisco. Musalo spent years studying these inconsistencies in asylum outcomes.

“I think there are a number of factors that contribute to these disparities. They have to do with both the selection process for the individual judges and what their backgrounds are and whether or not they’re qualified (to serve as judges),” Musalo said.

“It has to do with a politicization of the selection process. It has to do with a lack of independence of these immigration judges,” she added.

U.S. Immigration Court judges are not part of the independent judiciary but, rather, are appointed and work for the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which is an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Congress’s own Government Accountability Office twice issued reports—in 2008 and 2016—that point out a “signification variation” in asylum cases. In its reports, the GAO called on Congress to fix the problem.

But so far, nothing has happened.

…Paul Wickham Schmidt, a retired U.S. immigration judge, says the nation’s immigration court disparity is so wide that it can be explained only by personal bias creeping into judges’ decisions.

“If I were an immigrant, I’d rather be in California than in Atlanta, Georgia, any day,” he said. “Clearly, the attitudes of the judges and how they feel about asylum law has quite a bit to do with it,” Schmidt added.

The EOIR, the agency in charge of the immigration courts, declined NBC Bay Area’s request for an interview on the subject. Kathryn Mattingly, an EOIR spokesperson, emailed a statement:

“Regarding your reference to TRAC data, please note that we do not comment on third-party analysis of EOIR data because the method another party may use to analyze the raw data may be different from the analytical techniques EOIR uses. When looking at this issue, it is important to note that each asylum case is unique, with its own set of facts, evidentiary factors, and circumstances. Asylum cases typically include complex legal and factual issues and EOIR immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals members review each one on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration every factor allowable by law. It is also important to note that immigration courts in detained facilities typically have lower asylum grant rates because detained aliens with criminal convictions are not eligible for many forms of relief from removal. That all said, EOIR takes seriously any claims of unjustified and significant anomalies in immigration judge decision-making and takes steps to evaluate disparities in immigration adjudications. In addition, EOIR monitors immigration judge performance through an official performance work plan and evaluation process, as well as daily supervision of the courts by assistant chief immigration judges.”

Source: Data Points to Wide Gap in Asylum Approval Rates at Nation’s Immigration Courts

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Ethnic Chinese in Malaysia are celebrating China’s rise – but as multicultural Malaysians, not Chinese

2018/05/12 Leave a comment

Interesting:

In 2015, China’s then ambassador to Malaysia, Huang Huikang, visited Kuala Lumpur Chinatown just ahead of a planned pro-Malay rally. Huang’s walkabout, during which he spoke out against racism and extremism, defused a potential ethnic showdown. But it earned the ambassador a summoning to the foreign ministry to explain his perceived meddling in Malaysia’s domestic affairs.

The Kuala Lumpur incident is a portent of things to come as China steps up efforts to connect as well as protect overseas Chinese communities. During the 19th Communist Party congress, last year, President Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s strategic policy of co-opting the Chinese diaspora into Beijing’s grand push to internationalise the “Chinese dream”.

Xi’s overture is hitting some wrong notes. In the United States, lawmakers have complained that mainland Chinese students there have come under pressure from Beijing after criticising China. In Australia, Canberra is proposing countermeasures for alleged interference by the Communist Party in the country’s internal affairs and in the Chinese Australian communities.

The Chinese diaspora is a global phenomenon unlike others because immigrants from China have, over the centuries, planted roots in almost every continent. More crucially, the crisis-stricken homeland they left behind generations ago is today a rejuvenated, self-confident modern nation-state. And this re-emerging superpower is eager to re-enter the world stage and shape the existing international order.

For this reason, Beijing’s harnessing of the overseas Chinese population could have far-reaching global ramifications.

In Malaysia, the complexion of the Chinese diaspora bears certain distinct features. Numbering about 7 million, Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese community is one of the largest concentrations of overseas Chinese in any country. And nearing 25 per cent of the population, they exert considerable economic sway and, to a lesser extent, political leverage.

Perhaps what is unique is the pristine preservation of the Chinese heritage, a legacy of Malaysia’s acclaimed multiculturalism. One example is the national vernacular school system, where ethnic minorities can learn and sustain their mother tongues. This has enabled the Chinese communities to keep alive their culture and beliefs in a manner unmatched anywhere else – even to the envy of mainland Chinese whose traditional way of life was decimated during the Cultural Revolution.

Yet Malaysia’s celebrated diversity is a double-edged sword, as it has slowed assimilation. The country is trapped in a race paradigm where racial dynamics dictate public policy and colour national discourse. Intended to protect the rights of the Malay majority, the bumiputera policies continue to draw a wedge between the races.

Discontented, some have chosen to leave, precipitating a brain drain, chiefly to Australia and neighbouring Singapore. In fact, Malaysians are the biggest group of overseas Chinese to re-migrate.

Fortunately, these setbacks do not round up the Malaysia story. There are alternative narratives, where the aspired “1Malaysia” is a lived reality. Malaysians do come together as one, especially when engaging the world at large. Successes by international sports stars, such as diver Pandelela Rinong, badminton player Lee Chong Wei and squash player Nicol David, have fired up patriotic displays of emotions that transcend race.

One way to explain this seeming anomaly is that most Malaysians at the personal level do experience genuine friendship across racial lines. Interpersonal contacts such as these have slowly but steadily fostered mutual respect and goodwill.

There are alternative narratives, where the aspired ‘1Malaysia’ is a lived reality

Regrettably, this grass-roots bonding is often undermined and overshadowed by racialised national politics. Even so, under certain favourable conditions, these contained but enduring feelings of kinship do break to the surface, showcasing to the world the true 1Malaysia spirit.

It is within this broader context that we see the Chinese in Malaysia wrestle with their own conflicted devotion to past memories and present realities.

Firstly, like Irish Australians’ love for all things Ireland, Chinese Malaysians, too, follow with keen interest China-related developments. The miraculous turnaround of the People’s Republic in recent decades, for example, has thrilled overseas Chinese.

At the same time, Chinese in Malaysia are unreservedly Malaysian, just as the Irish in Australia are true-blue Aussies. And there is no better demonstration of this than the Chinese Malaysians’ impassioned support for Lee Chong Wei, even when he faces off against his arch-rival, Lin Dan of China.

Powered by its ambitious “Belt and Road Initiative”, China’s inroads into Malaysia are expanding by the day. And this is inducing some shocks to the country’s rich yet fragile social landscape.

Indeed, when ambassador Huang stepped into the Chinatown fray, he also waded into a long-standing controversy surrounding insinuations of Chinese Malaysians’ divided loyalty. The ambassador’s intervention was manipulated by some as proof of China acting as a protector of the Chinese minority in Malaysia, casting further aspersions on these Malaysians’ national allegiance.

To Chinese Malaysians, this was a most unfair and unjustified accusation.

True, the Chinese still embody the civilisational inheritance of their ancestral land. But these multigenerational Malaysians have also been indelibly transformed by the land of their birth. Like descendants of immigrants everywhere, they are turning into cultural hybrids, metamorphosing from a mono-cultural Chinese towards a more pronounced multicultural Malaysian. To use an agricultural metaphor, the born-and-bred-in-Malaysia ethnic Chinese are now the fruit of the land – sprouting and flourishing with textures and flavours unique to the Malaysian ecology. With time, these Chinese have become truly Malaysian, exuding the cultural DNA of their new homeland.

Thus, as China rises, like most overseas Chinese communities, ethnic Chinese in Malaysia are revelling in spontaneous flushes of cultural pride. But they do so not as Chinese, but as Malaysians. Or, to put it in the phraseology familiar to Beijing: as proud “Malaysians with Chinese characteristics”.

Source: Ethnic Chinese in Malaysia are celebrating China’s rise – but as multicultural Malaysians, not Chinese

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

A Sudanese teenager killed her rapist, and Muslim women are fighting for her life

2018/05/12 Leave a comment

Noteworthy:

Violence against women does not discriminate. One in three womenacross the globe experience physical or sexual violence in their lives, regardless of race, age or income. Intimate partner violence is the most common form, with physical violence occurring to as many as two out of three women who have ever been in an intimate partnership.

This is not news, and yet, the difference in how this violence is discussed is stark, depending on where and by whom it has been perpetrated. When the violence occurs in majority Muslim countries, pundits are quick to blame Islam itself, instead of noticing the army of Muslim women who are fighting for their rights within the faith, and defending women – and themselves – at all costs.

Noura Hussein, a young woman from Sudan, provides an instructive and urgent example. At the age of 16, Noura was forced into a marriage by her father. She refused and escaped from her family home near Khartoum to stay with her aunt in Sennar, around 250km away. She lived there for three years, determined to finish her education, when she received word that the wedding plans had been cancelled, and she was welcome to come home.

On her return, it became apparent that she had been tricked. The wedding ceremony was underway, and Noura was duly “given” to the groom. Distraught, the 19-year-old refused to consummate the marriage for a number of days. Within the week, her husband’s tactics became increasingly aggressive. Noura’s husband raped her, with the help of relatives who pinned her down during the act.

When the husband returned the next day to repeat the crime, Noura retaliated. She stabbed her husband a number of times, ultimately killing her rapist. She thereafter returned to her family, who reportedly then disowned her and turned her over to the police.

Over a year later, on 29 April, 2018, Noura was convicted of murder. On 10 May, she was sentenced to death. His family was offered the choice of either accepting monetary compensation for the crime, or execution. They chose the latter. Now the family and community have 15 days to appeal the sentence. They are hoping to overturn the decision to execute Noura for defending herself against physical and sexual violence, and navigating an impossible situation that no young woman should ever face.

Noura’s story is perhaps not unusual in a world where intimate partner violence is rife. However, there is something about Noura’s case that is indicative of a wider truth. The majority of people involved in raising awareness about this young woman’s case are other Sudanese Muslim women. The lawyers working on the case in Washington DC are members of the Sudanese diaspora, and word of the case reached me through another Sudanese writer’s Instagram and blogposts. The majority of people fighting for Noura are women, Muslim women.

This reality flies in the face of those who claim that Muslim women are oppressed, submissive or believe in a religion that takes away their rights. It also stands in complete opposition to men who try to use a warped version of sharia to justify any part of such a situation – the forced marriage, the rape, the sentencing. The women arguing on Noura’s behalf point to both law and theology: to be wedded without consent is forbidden in Islam. Child marriage is still practiced, although women continue to fight the laws and traditions that allow it.

However, as happens so often in cases like this, the story becomes an opportunity for the airing of grievances and prejudices about Islam, through the argument of advocating for women’s rights. Islam is violent, people will say, because of how they treat their women – and look, here is an example that reinforces that argument!

Let the women who are advocates for #JusticeForNoura be an example of how that is fundamentally incorrect. The burden on Muslim women is impossibly heavy – to defend themselves against both the ignorance of non-Muslims with an Islamophobic agenda, and the deeply patriarchal norms that exist within interpretations of sharia around the world. To paraphrase Dr Susan Carland, Muslim women forever face a catch-22. However, when the fight truly is on, as in the case of Noura, they are the first to step up to fight for each other’s rights and protection. Tell me, how is that oppression?

Source: A Sudanese teenager killed her rapist, and Muslim women are fighting for her life

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Canada’s oldest Jewish congregation, a civil rights champion, marks 250 years

2018/05/12 Leave a comment

Some early Canadian history:

The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal was a forerunner of multiculturalism before the word had been invented.

Its members were among the founders of Canada: fur-traders, captains of industry and scholars.

Their struggle for civil rights made Quebec the first place in the British Empire where Jews could hold office.

So how come so few people know its amazing story?

Canada’s oldest Jewish congregation is celebrating its 250th anniversary this year. On Thursday, the synagogue is holding a gala dinner to mark the anniversary.

For Rabbi Avi Finegold, it’s an opportunity for the congregation on St-Kevin St. in Snowdon to celebrate its storied past and contribution to intercultural harmony.

“I like to think multiculturalism and religious pluralism started with us,” Finegold said.

“Diversity starts with our congregation. We represent something much bigger than us,” he said.

Montreal city council passed a resolution marking the anniversary in March and the synagogue is planning other events throughout the year, including a speaker series, travelling exhibition and the commissioning of a new Torah scroll.

Founded in Old Montreal in 1768, the synagogue, also known as Shearith Israel (remnant of Israel), was founded by Quebec’s first Jews — an enterprising group of merchants who arrived with British troops starting in 1759.

Its origins are rooted in the military and religious struggles that shaped the modern world, from the Spanish Inquisition to the age-old rivalry between France and England for world domination.

And its membership would include some of the brightest denizens of Montreal’s elite Square Mile, from streetcar magnate Jesse Joseph, president of the city’s streetcar company, to Clarence de Sola, a leader of Canada’s Zionist movement at the turn of the 20th century.

One of the rare surviving mansions on René Lévesque Blvd., the Judah house at 1980 René-Lévesque W., just west of the ramp to westbound Highway 720, belonged to another congregation member, the prominent lawyer and real-estate owner Frederick Thomas Judah.

Never heard of any of those gents?

Not surprising, because there was something of the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie about Montreal’s Jewish community in its first century of existence.

“It was a community that was quite discreet,” said Éliane Bélec, a doctoral student in history at Université du Québec à Montréal who wrote a 65-page commemorative booklet on the congregation that will be distributed to members.

Unlike the Ashkenazi Jews who poured into Canada from 1880 to 1920, fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, the earlier community (which included Ashkenazi Jews but practised Sephardic rituals) was numerically small, wealthy and assimilated, she noted.

“I think the Spanish and Portuguese, the Sephardic community, was very Westernized while the Ashkenazi who arrived from Europe had their own way of dressing and their own foods,” Bélec said.

During the 1880s, Montreal’s Jewish population rose from 811 to 2,473 and in the 1890s it rose to 6,941, according to Taking Root: the Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community by Gerald Tulchinsky (Brandeis University Press, 1993).

Fast forward to the 1960s, when the arrival of Sephardic Jews from the Middle East and North Africa again changed the Jewish community.

“When we first came in 1970, the congregation was 85 per cent Ashkenazi,” said Norma Joseph, a professor of religion and cultures at Concordia University and the wife of Rabbi Emeritus Howard Joseph, who led the congregation for 40 years.

Within a few years, the membership had become 85 per cent Sephardic, with substantial contingents from Iraq, Lebanon and Morocco, she said.

The couple will be honoured for their long service to the synagogue at Thursday’s gala.

“One of the things my husband excelled at was making the different communities feel welcome and telling them that their own traditions were valuable, wonderful and that we could all live together in our multicultural synagogue,” Joseph said.

“On Rosh Hashanah, we have five different services. We have the main Spanish and Portuguese tradition, we have an Iraqi service, a Moroccan service, a Lebanese service, and an authentic Ashkenazi service.

“When you walk into each one of these services and close your eyes, you think you’re transported back 100 years to the different countries. It’s the most amazing, wonderful feeling,” she said.

For more information on the 250th anniversary, visit thespanish.org/250th-home or call 514-737-3695.

Why Spanish and Portuguese?

When Spain and Portugal expelled the Jews in 1492 and 1497, hundreds of thousands of “conversos,” Jews who had converted to Christianity — often under duress — remained. They now became the main targets for persecution. Over time, some escaped to other parts of Western Europe and returned to the Jewish fold. In Amsterdam, the world’s leading trading city and a centre of religious tolerance, they founded a thriving community, supplemented by the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. It sent out offshoots to New York (then New Amsterdam) and London, where Spanish and Portuguese Synagogues were founded in 1654 and 1657 respectively. (The New York synagogue credits its founding to 23 Jews who escaped from Brazil after Portugal re-conquered it from the Dutch.)

Hart and Soul

Jews, banned from New France, began arriving in Quebec with the British army from 1759 onward. Among them was Aaron Hart (1724-1800), a sutler who sold provisions to the British troops. A protégé of commander and later governor Frederick Haldimand, Hart founded a dynasty in Trois-Rivières, where he became a successful merchant and landowner. Despite the distance, Hart maintained close ties to the Montreal synagogue.

Fight for rights

In 1807, Hart’s second son, Ezekiel (1770-1843) won a by-election in Trois-Rivières, becoming the first Jew elected to office in the British Empire. But the majority Canadien party (later the Patriotes) refused to let him take his seat in the assembly of Lower Canada because he was a Jew.

In 1832, the assembly passed a motion introduced by newspaper publisher John Neilson extending political rights to Jews, who were still barred from holding office in Britain.

 

Source: Canada’s oldest Jewish congregation, a civil rights champion, marks 250 years

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Douglas Todd: Amazon’s Vancouver ‘news’ lacks facts on jobs, migrants coming this way

2018/05/12 Leave a comment

More on the Canadian advantage in hiring talent and the mobility in the tech sector, written from a somewhat ambivalent perspective:

….The extent to which Canadian high-tech companies rely on foreign workers, international students and would-be migrants is explained in the book Trans-Pacific Mobilities: The Chinese and Canada (UBC Press), edited by the University of Calgary’s Lloyd Wong, with a key contribution by SFU’s Karl Froschauer.

Although Wong and Froschauer have never responded to my requests for interviews, they wrote in Trans-Pacific Mobilities that Metro Vancouver’s high-tech companies assertively look abroad for workers, mostly from Asia, and especially in India and China.

They do so, the sociologists write, because it means they can “spend a very small fraction of their salary budget on training and because B.C. universities produce relatively few graduates in the technology field … High-tech computer programming and computer systems analysis have been the two most common intended occupations of all skilled immigrants to Canada.”

Some international financial experts, however, are beginning to be more upfront about how one reason Canada’s high-tech sector is growing, particularly with satellite U.S. companies, is it is easier to get a visa to work in Canada than south of the border.

To put it simply, Canada’s open attitude to tech talent is the opposite of Trump’s, where the current national motto is, “Buy America. Hire America.”

Trump talks about further cracking down on the country’s coveted H-1B visas, which are used to place foreign workers in high-skilled U.S. jobs. As the BBC reports, U.S. politicians place a tight cap on H-1B visas because many do not want to see them used to replace skilled American workers with cheaper overseas counterparts.

Trudeau, on the other hand, is fast-tracking offshore high-tech workers and students. He’s brought in efforts like the Global Skills Strategy, which builds upon the 2015 “Express Entry” program; a free, online process that allows skilled workers to apply easily to immigrate.

Of the 500,000 international students in Canada in 2017, which was a 20 per cent jump from 2016, many are studying in technology fields.

One advantage in their coming to Canada is that — unlike in the U.S. where they are normally not allowed to stay in the country after they graduate — they can stay at least three years extra in Canada to work and go to the front of the queue for immigration. Another advantage of starting in Canadian high-tech is that foreign nationals who work for an American satellite company for one year can then get an inter-company transfer to the U.S.

Data is not available on how many Canadian-born or raised young people are getting jobs in the high-tech sectors in Vancouver, Toronto and across Canada. While employers routinely claim there is not enough local talent to hire, some B.C.-based business professors counter that there aren’t enough jobs for students graduating out of Canada’s high-tech programs.

In the midst of such trans-national confusion, shortage of facts and sometimes fantastical claims, there are pros and cons to the way the high-tech sector in Canada has become key to what Brock University researcher Zachary Spicer calls a globalized “brain churn.”

The world’s skilled workers, whether in Asia or North America, are not just flowing in one direction. They’re “churning,” shifting rapidly from country to country while chasing the most strategic jobs, with the restrictive U.S. generally being most sought-after, in large part because of its stronger salaries.

Raza Mirza, a high-tech worker in Vancouver who was recruited from Pakistan by a U.S. high-tech company, is not following the lead of many of his colleagues and moving to the U.S., even though he could make at least $40,000 Cdn more.

Separate from his own interests, he’s among many convinced the United States’ relatively protectionist approach to foreign labour, compared to Canada’s open policy, is definitely  boosting the high-tech sector in Canada.

“I believe the shortage of U.S. talent, and the U.S.’s unwillingness to let companies bring in more global talent, has been a huge factor in why U.S. technology companies are increasing their Canadian footprint.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Amazon’s Vancouver ‘news’ lacks facts on jobs, migrants coming this way

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

It’s time to abolish the inhumane Canada-U.S. deal on asylum-seekers: Sean Rehaag

2018/05/11 2 Comments

Although I am a great admirer of the work Rehaag has done with his analysis of IRB decisions and decision makers (see Refugee approval rates reflect subjectivity of decision-makers, prof says – Montreal – CBC News), his article proposing abolishing the STCA would lead to a further sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers (already controversial), further overwhelm the IRB (already overwhelmed) and undermine overall support for immigration in this country.

Evidence-based policies need to consider the operational aspects, as well as the trade-offs between overall immigration levels and classes:

The Canadian government reportedly wants the United States to close a loophole in what’s known as the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA).

The agreement allows Canada to send asylum-seekers back to the U.S. if they come to the border. But the deal only applies at official ports-of-entry, and not when asylum-seekers cross the border elsewhere — the loophole that Canada apparently wants eliminated.

Expanding the STCA to cover irregular crossings would mean that thousands of asylum-seekers would be sent back to the U.S. after making their way to the Canadian border in the wake of worsening conditions there under President Donald Trump.

The current American administration, however, is unlikely to tweak the agreement. Trump doesn’t like refugees. He has imposed travel bans on refugees selected for resettlement; attempted to block entry to asylum-seekers arriving in a “caravan” at the southern U.S. border; he’s scorned an agreement to transfer 1,250 refugees from Australian detention facilities to the U.S. as “the worst deal ever.”

The STCA has barred thousands of asylum-seekers from Canada. Prior to its implementation, approximately 10,000 asylum-seekers entered Canada via the United States each year. Some 200 went in the other direction. In this context, Trump is unlikely to expand the STCA. If anything, he’d want to cancel it outright to decrease the number of refugees in the U.S.

The STCA’s 9-11 history

It’s worth recalling the history of the STCA. Canada had long pushed for the STCA because of the lopsided flow of asylum-seekers, but the U.S. refused for years. After the 9-11 attacks, when border security was of utmost concern, Canada essentially pulled a fast one by offering enhanced information-sharing and common border security measures in exchange for the STCA.

However, Canada would have agreed to these measures regardless because disruption to the cross-border flows of goods and services hurts Canada’s economy. In essence, Canada got the STCA for nothing.

In the Trumpian world view, this is another “worst deal ever,” and it fits into his claim that “very smooth” Canada has “taken advantage” of the U.S. for years.

If the United States isn’t likely to agree to expand the STCA, what is going on here?

Simple. This is crass political theatre.

‘Beating up on refugees’

The ruling Liberals are facing attacks by the opposition Conservatives who have returned to beating up on refugees as a show of “toughness.” In response to growing numbers of asylum-seekers irregularly crossing the Canada-U.S. border, the Liberals must be seen to be taking action, even if that action is futile.

Still, something meaningful needs to be done.

One could debate whether the agreement was ever good policy. There’s a Constitutional challenge under way about whether it’s even lawful. But, regardless, it’s clearly not working now.

The more asylum-seekers resort to irregular crossings to circumvent the STCA, the more these sites are normalized as unofficial crossings. The longer this goes on, the less effective the STCA will be at deterring future asylum-seekers from coming to Canada via the U.S.

At the same time, if specific unofficial crossings are blocked off, asylum-seekers will simply move to other, more dangerous crossings. Every country that has built barriers has seen asylum-seekers driven to increasingly desperate and dangerous measures.

Alan Kurdi — the child whose death en route to seeking asylum in the European Union sparked Canada’s most recent refugee resettlement program — and the thousands of migrants who have died trying to evade ever-increasing surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico border are stark examples of this tragic phenomenon.

In other words, if Canada blocks places like Roxham Road on the Québec/New York state border, refugees will cross remote fields in Manitoba during snowstorms. Asylum-seekers take these kinds of risks on a daily basis around the world.

If expanding the agreement is not viable, if erecting barriers is terrible policy, and if the status quo is not working — what can be done?

Also simple.

Do away with the STCA

It’s time for Canada to suspend the STCA. Asylum-seekers should be able to make refugee claims at regular ports-of-entry. At the same time, the government should calibrate funding and staffing levels for the Immigration and Refugee Board to the number of claims in the system.

This would ensure that people who meet the refugee definition are recognized in a timely manner and put on the path to successful settlement, while those who do not need Canada’s protection can quickly be removed. And it’s worth a reminder: Most are likely to meet the legal test to stay.

Suspending the STCA is not a radical proposal. Asylum-seekers made claims at the Canada-U.S. border for decades pre-STCA and the system worked fine.

Suspending the STCA will not harm Canada’s relationship with the U.S., or the ongoing NAFTA negotiations. The Americans would happily discard the STCA.

Suspending the STCA is also politically viable. It will not end Conservative opposition attacks. But rather than defending inaction on so-called “illegal” border crossings, the Liberals can instead punch back and say that they respect international refugee law.

They can ask whether the Conservatives want Canada to deport refugees — and how that squares with the lessons that Canada was supposed to have learned from the days of none is too many, when Canada had one of the worst records among Western countries of providing refuge for European Jews fleeing the Holocaust. They can ask whether the Conservatives care about the tragic deaths of Alan Kurdi and thousands of other desperate asylum-seekers around the world.

Most importantly, by suspending the STCA, Canada can show that there is an alternative to the xenophobic extreme-right policies taking parts of the world by storm.

Instead of building walls, we can adopt evidence-based policies that comply with international law and that make our country a better place for everyone. And we can show that the sky will not fall if Canada hosts a few thousand more people who face persecution, torture and even death.

If not now, when?

via It’s time to abolish the inhumane Canada-U.S. deal on asylum-seekers

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →