Working site on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.
2025/05/30 Leave a comment
ICYMI: Good webinar on recent trends in citizenship by Fung Hou of StatsCan (decline in naturalization along with “citizens of convenience” evidence showing little difference between citizen immigrants and non-citizen immigrants who leave Canada) and a Canada-Australia comparison by Li Xu of IRCC.
2024/05/24 Leave a comment
As largely expected following the Court decision and the government’s decision not to appeal, the residency requirement has emerged as the least objectionable and easiest connection test to manage among the available options. However, it is strange that Bill C-71 isn’t fully consistent with the standard physical residency requirement for new Canadians: “must have been physically in Canada for at least 1,095 days (3 years) during the 5 years before the date you sign your application.” This means a weaker connection test than warranted IMO and curious to see how the government justifies this difference and assesses the impact on the number of people affected.
At least the government is following the normal legislative process in making the change rather than the backdoor shortcut of S-245, to allow for proper committee consideration and debate. It remains to be seen how the Conservatives react on the substance given their legitimate opposition to the S-245 approach.
The number of persons potentially affected is large. Out of the estimated 4 million Canadian expatriates, about half are by descent (i.e., born abroad). Two-thirds of expatriates are living in the USA, with another 15 percent in UK, Australia France and Italy (2017). The number living in other countries has increased from 14 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 2017.
As we have seen in previous efforts to respond to “Lost Canadians,” the actual number of those who request citizenship proofs is relatively small: an average of 1,500 per year, 2009-22. So while the impact is potentially large, the actual numbers are likely smaller given that for second and subsequent generation expatriates in the USA and EU, largely integrated into their country of residence, Canadian citizenship may not be a priority. On the other hand, it is likely a higher priority for those in other countries with less secure conditions, with Hong Kong being a prime example, and where we see growth in expatriates.
Of course, all of these expatriates will have voting rights, another reversal by this government of the previous government’s five year cut-off. However, despite the talk about the right to vote, actual interest in voting in Canadian elections is minimal among expatriates.
It will be interesting to see what analysis, if any, IRCC provides on the potential impact on its citizenship operations.
Having become a grandparent to a child born abroad, I look at how our the change affects our grandson. Under the current first-generation cut-off, he would not be able to transmit his Canadian citizenship to any future child. Under C-71, he would have to 1,095 cumulative days of physical presence in Canada. So the obvious and easiest strategy for him would be to attend university in Canada and thus start the clock again. Personally, the first generation cut-off did not concern us as we accept that family trajectories and trees evolve and change.
It would be helpful for the government and CIMM to look at my and other scenarios to understand the potential impact of the lack of a timeframe for the physical residency requirement, particularly for temporary workers (TFWP and IMP) which are less straightforward that the situation of my grandson.
Following a court order, the federal government has introduced new legislation to restore the citizenship rights of “lost Canadians” born outside Canada and ensure it doesn’t happen to others in the future.
This legislation would automatically confer Canadian citizenship to persons born abroad to a Canadian parent who is also born abroad beyond the first generation if the parents can pass a “substantial connection test.”
“It will be the first time that the Citizenship Act is actually charter compliant,” said Don Chapman, a staunched advocate for lost Canadians, after Bill C-71 was tabled in Parliament on Thursday. ”It’s monumental. And it has huge ramifications.”
As a result of the first-generation limit, Canadian citizens who were born outside Canada cannot pass on citizenship to their child born outside Canada; neither can they apply for a direct grant of citizenship for a child born outside Canada and adopted, creating generations of so-called “lost Canadians.”
“We want our citizenship to be fair, accessible, with clear and transparent rules. Not everyone is entitled to it, but for those who are, it needs to be fair,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller told reporters.
“We wanted to take this opportunity to continue to minimize differential outcomes as much as possible for children born abroad…compared to children born to Canadians (in Canada).”
According to the proposed amendment to the citizenship law, parents born abroad who have or adopt children also born outside Canada will need to have spent at least 1,095 cumulative days of physical presence in Canada prior to the birth or adoption of their child to pass on citizenship.
Lost Canadians and their families launched a constitutional challenge in court last year of the two-generation citizenship cutoff rules. Click here to post your thoughts
In December, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that it’s unconstitutional for Canada to deny automatic citizenship to children born abroad because their parents also happened to be born abroad. It gave the federal government six months, until June 19, to repeal what’s known as the “second-generation cut-off” rule and amend the Citizenship Act.
With the looming court-stipulated June 19 deadline to roll out the new scheme, Miller said the government is unlikely to receive royal assent to the bill in time and will have to go before the judge to ask for an extension, which will cause further delays for affected children and grandchildren of Canadians to acquire citizenship and join families in Canada.
“We are still looking at a number of options. We don’t want an extension ad nauseum because there are people that are being prejudiced by this,” Miller explained.
“I have a very uncomfortable role in the interim at applying a test that really should be legislative. But it’s something that will have to speak to the court about. Again, we hope that this can be passed at all stages.”
In 2009, the then-Conservative government changed the citizenship law and imposed the second-generation cut-off on Canadians born abroad, after Ottawa had faced a massive effort to evacuate 15,000 Lebanese Canadians stranded in Beirut during Israel’s month-long war in Lebanon in 2006.
The $85-million price tag of the evacuation effort sparked a debate over “Canadians of convenience” — referring to individuals with Canadian citizenship who live permanently outside of Canada without “substantive ties” to Canada, but who were nonetheless part of the government’s liability.
As a result, the government abolished the then existing “substantial connection” regime and adopted a blanket rule that denies the first generation born abroad the right to pass on citizenship by descent outside Canada to the second generation born abroad.
In January, Ottawa decided not to challenge the court decision, but instead would repeal the existing law and put forward a new bill that’s compliant with the Canadian constitution.
Source: Canada to extend citizenship to children born abroad, restoring rights of ‘lost Canadians’
The press backgrounder:
Bill C-71: An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2024)
From: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
The Citizenship Act contains a first-generation limit to citizenship by descent, which means that a Canadian citizen parent can pass on citizenship to a child born outside Canada if the parent was either born in Canada or naturalized before the birth of the child. Canadians born or naturalized in Canada before adopting a child born abroad can apply for a direct grant of citizenship for the adopted child.
As a result of the first-generation limit, Canadian citizens who were born outside Canada cannot pass on citizenship to their child born outside Canada, and cannot apply for a direct grant of citizenship for a child born outside Canada and adopted.
On December 19, 2023, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice declared that the first-generation limit for those born abroad is unconstitutional. The Government of Canada did not appeal the ruling because we agree that the law has unacceptable consequences for Canadians whose children were born outside the country.
The government is introducing legislation to make the citizenship process as fair and transparent as possible. Bill C-71 would
Substantial connection test
Bill C-71 would allow a Canadian parent born abroad who has a substantial connection to Canada to pass on citizenship to their child born abroad beyond the first generation. It would also provide them with access to the direct grant of citizenship for their child born abroad and adopted beyond the first generation.
To demonstrate a substantial connection to Canada, a Canadian parent who was born abroad would need to have a cumulative 1,095 days of physical presence in Canada before the birth or adoption of the child.
Lost Canadians
The term “Lost Canadians” has generally been used to describe those who lost or never acquired citizenship due to certain outdated provisions of former citizenship legislation.
Most cases were remedied by changes to the law in 2009 and 2015. These changes allowed people to gain Canadian citizenship or get back the citizenship they lost. Despite this, additional amendments are needed to include other categories of Lost Canadians and their descendants who did not benefit from the 2009 and 2015 changes.
Bill C-71 will restore citizenship to any remaining “Lost Canadians,” their descendants and anyone who was born abroad to a Canadian parent in the second or subsequent generations before the legislation comes into force. This includes people who lost their citizenship as a result of requirements under the former section 8 of the Citizenship Act.
2024/04/29 Leave a comment
This report, commissioned by Senator Woo, essentially argues for more services and support for Canadian expatriates. While it contains some useful comparisons of provincial health care coverage and non-coverage, as well as provincial election regulations, it is disappointingly light on measures of connection to Canada, whether passport issued to Canadians abroad (no recent public stats apparently) or non-resident taxation (less than 32,000 in 2021).
In terms of the specific recommendations below, my thoughts are as follows:
Overall, the author has an overly optimistic take on the interest and willingness of long-term Canadian expatriates to advance Canadian interests. The vast majority are living their lives in their country of residence, contributing to that country’s economy and society, with relatively few highly engaged in advancing Canadian interests. Those are largely known to embassies and consulates and Canadian interest groups. Again, more could be done but given limited resources and little hard evidence to demonstrate effectiveness, the case is weak.
Source: CANADIANS ABROAD: Overview of Recent Research and Implications for Public Policy
2022/08/13 Leave a comment
Interesting arguments but likely overstates the importance of dual citizenship as a factor in facilitating a return of former Chinese nationals to China, particularly given Chinese government general repression (not limited to Uyghurs and Hong Kong) and control (e.g., COVID lockdowns):
Citizenship has become a sensitive topic in China. Every so often, you’ll see lists in the Chinese media – of film stars who hold foreign passports, or billionaires who made money in China but now hold foreign passports. On the Chinese internet, some of these individuals get labelled as unpatriotic, or worse.
One of netizens’ latest targets is Harvard physics professor Xi Yin, a China-born prodigy who has been quoted as saying he has no plans to return to his native country at present. A US citizen now, Yin is also married to an American woman.
China does not allow dual citizenship. The line of reasoning seems to be that the authorities don’t want to create a group of people who enjoy too much privilege, or potentially allow criminals to evade punishment. Critics say it is a way of ensuring citizens’ loyalty or maintaining a monoculture.
But much of the rest of the world has moved on, with more countries embracing dual citizenship against the backdrop of globalisation. Back in the 1960s, only one-third of countries allowed dual citizenship. Today, 75 per cent do.
Perhaps China should follow suit. It would help reverse the brain drain from the country.
Around the time Deng Xiaoping launched the reform and opening up policy, students were sent abroad to study, in countries including the US, Canada and the UK. This trend did not always pay off. In 2007, China Daily reported that, between 1978 and 2006, 1.06 million Chinese went overseas for studies and more than 70 per cent chose not to return. At that time, China probably suffered the most severe brain drain in the world.
To tackle the problem, Beijing has increased investment in higher education, and research and development. It introduced programmes such as the Thousand Talents Planto lure back leading Chinese talent. Under the plan “sea turtles”, or returnees from overseas – in Chinese, the two terms are homonyms – may receive a one-time bonus of 1 million yuan (US$148,400). However, the programme has reportedly delivered mixed results. Not nearly enough sea turtles swim home.
As China grew rich, it became common practice among affluent families to send children abroad for further education. Between 2015 and 2019, 80 per cent of these students did return. Yet, China is still losing first-rate talent. In recent years, a reported 80 per cent of Chinese PhD students in the US have been reluctant to return.
Many developing countries in the world lose talent to the US, but China probably suffers more, especially in the realm of hi-tech. Those bright Chinese minds working at the cutting edge of American technology might also be hampering China’s own tech ambitions.
Indeed, China’s hope of dominating artificial intelligence may be threatened by the brain drain. According to a study conducted by MacroPolo, a think tank run by the Paulson Institute, Chinese researchers accounted for a quarter of the authors whose papers were accepted by a prestigious AI conference in 2019.
However, three-quarters of the Chinese authors were working outside China, and 85 per cent of those were working in the US, at tech giants such as Google or universities like UCLA.
Source: To reverse brain drain, China should be more flexible on dual citizenship
2021/12/14 Leave a comment
Not unexpected but the Act does have a provision to address statelessness. Would be interesting to have the data on the extent of its its application rather than just highlighting individual cases (which highlight issues).
The previous retention provisions were hard to administer consistently and fairly (“substantial connection” not as simple as it sounds), and there are advantages to clarity provided by the first generation limit.
From a policy perspective, the focus was on providing equal treatment for those born in Canada and immigrants who became naturalized Canadians.
And ironic that some expatriate Canadians complain about having to pay for healthcare should they return to Canada to give birth to “restart the clock” when more than a few thousand foreign women do so as “birth tourists.”
But a useful reminder that expatriates need to consider citizenship implications more closely when planning to have children.
After numerous failed attempts to conceive a child, including a lost pregnancy through in vitro fertilization, Emma Kenyon and her husband were grateful and thrilled for the arrival of their first baby.
On Dec. 5, healthy six-pound, two-ounce Darcy was born at a public hospital in Hong Kong. However, a bureaucratic nightmare for his Canadian expatriate parents has just begun.
As new parents, the nursing mother and her husband, Daniel Warelis — both foreign-born Canadian citizens who grew up in Greater Toronto — must fight to find a way to bring their stateless child home.
“I don’t think any country, especially a country like Canada, should allow little babies to be born stateless to Canadian citizens. It’s a travesty,” said Kenyon, 35, who was born in Tokyo while her father was working there for the Bank of Nova Scotia.
“The most important thing for us is that Darcy is not stateless as soon as possible.”
This week, the couple joined five other Canadian families to launch a Charter challenge against a rule in Canada’s citizenship act that denies the transmission of citizenship by descent to these foreign-born kids if both their Canadian parents also happened to be born overseas.
The previous Conservative government changed the law in 2009 and imposed the so-called “second generation” cut-off against Canadians born abroad after Ottawa’s massive effort to evacuate 15,000 Lebanese Canadians stranded in Beirut during a month-long war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006.
The $85 million price tag of the evacuation effort sparked a debate over “Canadians of convenience” about individuals with Canadian citizenship who live permanently outside of Canada without “substantive ties” to Canada but were part of the government liability.
Source: ‘If we are not Canadian, what are we?’ How a 2009 law is leaving some children stateless
2021/09/07 Leave a comment
Never supported expatriate voting for those with minimal to no connection to Canada which the current law allows.
Tax, passport and other data indicates that the number with strong connections to Canada is much lower and the 2.8 estimate is from an Asia Pacific Foundation study that included those under 18 and Permanent Residents (not just citizens).
Experience from other countries indicates a relatively small portion of expatriates vote given their greater connection to country of residence or other factors: less than 10 percent with the exception of France):
It’s estimated that 2.8 million Canadians live outside the country, yet Elections Canada expects as few as 34,000 expatriates will vote in Canada’s 44th general election on Sept. 20.
As polls tighten, and political parties try to expand their support, Canadians like me who live abroad are another source of voters Liberals can tap in order to secure a majority mandate — or the Conservatives can use to pull off an upset win. They just need to mobilize us, which the pandemic has actually made easier.
Despite attempts by former prime minister Stephen Harper to restrict the voting rights of Canadians who’ve lived abroad for more than five years, now, any adult who’s lived in Canada at some point in his or her life is eligible. Whether they agree with them or not, these are the rules the parties should consider as they strategize.
To maximize their chances of forming government, political parties spend campaigns energizing their supporters, or enticing undecided ones, to cast a ballot for their candidates.
Traditionally, they can count on about 60 per cent of eligible Canadians to vote. In the last election, 67 per cent of electors, or about 18 million Canadians, cast a ballot.
But despite efforts by political parties, in the past five elections, voter turnout has never exceeded 70 per cent. This leaves parties with limited ways to increase their bases.
But one way is to add voters. According to Nik Nanos of Nanos Research, the Liberals were denied a majority in the last election after losing 13 ridings by a total of 22,599 votes.
Canadians living abroad must register or request a special ballot to vote, mail it in, and vote where they last lived. Elections Canada is expecting a surge in these types of votes from inside the country, given the reluctance to vote in person during a pandemic.
This has changed the way political parties are campaigning. Large rallies and other traditional activities have been modified to meet public-health restrictions, which vary in degree across the country.
Much of the campaign is online, and this makes social media, organic and paid, more important. Digital tactics, which include encouraging mail-in ballots, make it easier for political parties to reach Canadians outside the country, who’d normally be left out.
Parties assign regional campaign chairs to groups of provinces and territories. Meanwhile, the estimated 2.8 million Canadians living abroad exceed the populations of nine Canadian provinces and territories, although it’s unlikely that campaign resources have been dedicated to engaging these millions of expats.
In contrast, Democrats Abroad, for example, actively supports voter registration, while keeping Americans who live abroad informed of key programs and policies.
Canadians live all over the world, but by analyzing past voting habits, we know where to target them.
In the 2019 election, most special ballots were requested from the U.S. and the U.K., and many fewer from China, Hong Kong, Australia, and Germany.
While we might not know how Canadians abroad vote, we know that millions of them have the right to vote and never have.
In a tightening race — and in an online campaign driving mail-in ballots — this is an opportunity for parties to gain voters. With some small changes in messaging targeted at key overseas locations, it could make all the difference.
Max Stern is a former employee of the Liberal Party of Canada, and a graduate student and communications consultant living in Brooklyn, New York.
Source: Parties should target the millions of voters outside Canada
2021/02/02 Leave a comment
Given that, according to an Asia Pacific Foundation poll that a majority of Canadian citizens resident in Hong Kong had only lived in Canada for 4 to 5 years (“Canadians of convenience” to use the previous government’s phrase), will be interesting to see how many return and when:
The leaders of Hong Kong are pressuring about 350,000 residents who hold Canadian passports to make an ultimate decision about their citizenship.
Under the thumb of Mainland China — which does not allow dual citizenship — the territorial government is squeezing people who have been living and working for decades in the financial hub while holding passports from other nations, most commonly Canada.
2021/01/27 Leave a comment
Of note. Canadian political parties to date have been inactive compared to the parties of other countries where expatriate voting rights have been longstanding such as the US and UK:
A new group headed by some prominent Conservatives aims to mobilize right-leaning Canadians living overseas — and marks a changed attitude toward longtime expat voters after the Supreme Court of Canada significantly expanded their voting rights.
“It’s one of the last truly untapped areas of the electorate,” John Baird, former Conservative cabinet minister, told the National Post. Baird is the honorary president for the new group, called Canadian Conservatives Abroad (CCA).
Baird said expats “overwhelmingly” don’t vote in elections, and noted the estimated three million Canadians living abroad is equivalent to about 30 electoral ridings. About 20,000 expat voters were registered ahead of the 2019 election.
The push to form the group is in part motivated by a 2019 Supreme Court decision that ruled it was unconstitutional to bar Canadian citizens from voting if they’ve lived outside Canada longer than five years. That prohibition had been in place since 1993 (though sometimes enforced loosely), but the Liberal government lifted it with Bill C-76 in 2018.
Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Conservatives fought against allowing longtime expats to vote and cracked down on the practice, alleging people were using loopholes to get around the five-year rule. Embracing the expat vote is somewhat of an about-face, but it’s also a recognition that the prohibition isn’t coming back and the Conservatives are missing an opportunity by not organizing among this population.
The CCA will be modelled after similar organizations for Americans (Republicans Overseas), Britons (Conservatives Abroad) and Australians (Australian Liberals Abroad). Democrats Abroad, which organizes overseas for the U.S. Democratic Party, is another well-known example.
Nigel Wright, a former chief of staff to Harper, will chair the CCA’s executive committee. The group is based in London and the leadership team includes Conservatives spread around the world, according to a news release.
The CCA will operate independently of political parties, but look for supporters of both federal and provincial conservative parties. “We’re starting with a solid base in the U.S., U.K., the Middle East and Asia,” Wright said in a statement.
Baird said he expects the CCA will be primarily focused on voter education, mobilization and assistance with administrative hurdles, but it will also organize virtual events and other forms of networking for overseas Conservatives. Another goal is to help drive Canadian policy discussions on global affairs from a right-wing perspective.
“We’re a group of volunteers that are just getting started, so we’ll see what form it takes,” Baird said. “It’s an exciting opportunity.”
The CCA’s first event will be a discussion on the establishment of a “CANZUK” alliance between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom that would aim to coordinate matters of migration, education, free trade and foreign policy between the countries. The event will be held to coincide with the upcoming Conservative policy convention in March.
2020/04/20 Leave a comment
Good discussion on the changing meanings of immigrant, migrant and expat. The greater distinction, in my view, is between immigrant and migrant/expat, as the former means settling more or less permanently with a more formal pathway to citizenship, whereas migrant/expat is more temporary, with the distinction being more with respect to socioeconomic status:
Growing up in Hong Kong, I was constantly surrounded by people from around the world. From the UK to South Africa and Canada, I was exposed to a number of different cultures in my day-to-day life, especially in school. But it wasn’t until middle school, where acquaintances would casually use two distinct terms to define either affluent or poorer areas of the city, that I really began to take notice of the significance of the language of immigration.
Based on what I observed, it was clear that whenever someone referred to a person as an “expat”, they generally tended to be middle to upper-class native English speakers, working in professions such as banking, tech, education or creative roles. When it came to the word “immigrant”, the term tended to apply loosely to both blue-collar workers, and those desperate to flee their birth country in order to make “a better life” for themselves.
Around a month ago, while FaceTiming a friend who had just moved back to Singapore from London, the extent of those differences became even more pronounced. In the middle of our chat, he mentioned a print magazine called Expat Living, and how bizarre it was that among other publications, it was still considered a best-seller in the country despite the dying print media industry. It led me to think about the marketing power of the word “expat” – clearly a symbol of financial value in society. It placed them on a uniquely aspirational pedestal.
Expats are praised for daring to move to a new country, while immigrants feel pressured to get approval from citizens and assimilate for survival. Whether it’s a conscious or subconscious decision, there’s no denying that these terms represent the double standards in society’s view on immigration. It’s not so different here in London, where even after seven years of living here, I’m still confronted by the same forms of hypocrisy, especially in the language the media uses in stories about immigration. Prior to this pandemic, for example, a simple search for the terms “immigrant” would typically pull up more divisive and sensationalist headlines.
In popular media, the word “immigrant” often showcases individual storylines of struggle, hard work and overcoming hardships. On Instagram, a search for accounts and posts hashtagged with “immigrant” reveal feeds of documentary-style visuals and text about sacrifice and injustice. Clearly, there’s a heavy sense of activism connected to the immigrant experience in the media, in contrast to the image of luxury and privilege that is seen to come with being an expat.
Why? When it comes to the way people treat both groups, the narratives the words we use to describe create an unconscious bias. There’s a general feeling that immigrants are associated with negative qualities about their birthplace, whereas expats are commended for living in a country outside of their own. The meanings we’ve ascribed to these words have a lot to do with connotations about certain races and class systems.
Look at the etymology of the word “expat” (the short form of “Expatriate”), for example. It derives from the Latin terms “ex” (out of) and “patria” (fatherland). By definition, an expat is just someone who moves to live in a country they weren’t born in. Interestingly, the term was most commonly used in the 20th century to describe British servants who were often sent to work abroad against their will. According to Sophie Cranston, a lecturer in human geography at Loughborough University, who spoke to The Atlantic about the changing meaning of terms like expat, it was only in the early 90s, that it came to mean what it does now: a descriptor for (typically wealthy) westerners living abroad.
With immigration being brought up more on social and mainstream media, it’s also important to note that these terms are being reclaimed. The term “migrant”, which is sometimes used in place of “immigrant” and often bears the same connotations (although the definitions vary from place to place), seems to have been reclaimed.
In 2015-16, immigration became the hottest political topic in the UK due to the European migrant crisis and Brexit. The Leave campaign heavily focused on villainising immigrants in the media, using anti-migrant propaganda and anti-migrant sentiments to create fear towards them, which subsequently led to their unfortunate victory.
The negativity has since inspired a rise of people from immigrant backgrounds to create movements reclaiming and redefining the meaning of being an immigrant. Groups like Migrants in Culture and Migration Collective are both optimistic examples of how immigrants have used the power of art, statistics, and culture to express different realities and examine issues regarding immigration in the UK.
Migrant Journal, a monthly print and digital magazine with a social media platform that focuses on the experiences of people, goods, and information around the world and the positive impact they have on various spaces, has also embraced the word “migrant”. The design of their issues are illustrative, with cerebral stories and minimal details that bring a smart and thoughtful impression to “migrant” labels. They’ve shown that beyond the stories of people, other things such as objects, spaces and fine art can express the immigrant experience in media in a highbrow manner.
Contrastingly, there’s a rise in using social media to poke fun at “expat” realities and stereotypes. For instance, the popular meme Instagram account @hkmehmeh was founded by a Korean woman who identifies as an expat living in Hong Kong. Her account uses popular internet culture with a mix of Cantonese slang and relatable “Hong Kong” sayings to create humorous memes that put a light-hearted spin on living in the city from an expat perspective. The account’s satirical integration of expatriate stereotypes and local culture makes it entertaining for all people who reside in the city – there’s no discrimination with her memes. As a Korean expat, her presence is inadvertently broadening the image of “expat” and diminishing the assumption that expats can only be white people.
While these labels once showed the double standards of the language of migration, they’re beginning to break away from strict definitions. By forging cultural visibility for terms like these, we create opportunities for more open conversations about questioning the need for labels, their effect on our unconscious bias and reclaiming these terms in a positive way.
Platforms that enable positive outlooks on reclaiming negative labels can unite people rather than split them apart. Hopefully, more of this kind of action will allow people to see that regardless of your identity, anyone who immigrates to another country shares more similarities than differences and that labels shouldn’t limit or define anyone in what they want to achieve.
Source: How the language of migration put expats on a pedestal – and left immigrants in the dust
2020/03/03 Leave a comment
Will be interesting to see if Canadian parties, following the extension of voting rights to virtually all expatriates, develop comparable approaches to engage expatriates (didn’t see many signs in the 2019 election):
As Americans prepare to vote in the “Super Tuesday” Democratic presidential primaries Tuesday, a lot of attention will be paid to the two biggest states: California and Texas. But Americans living in Toronto and across Canada could have an even bigger impact, proportionally.
Alongside the 14 states and one territory holding their primary on Tuesday, it’s also the start of voting for the Democrats Abroad primary, in which U.S. citizens who live in other countries are able to vote in a separate primary that sends 13 pledged delegates to the nominating convention. That’s only one fewer electable delegates than some states such as North Dakota and Wyoming elect. And because fewer people vote in the international contest — an estimated 9 million American eligible voters live abroad, but less than 35,000 voters participated in 2016 — each vote carries far more weight.
According to a recent message sent out to members by Democrats Abroad Canada, that means the votes of Americans in Toronto has four times the impact of a vote in California.
One campaign trying to take advantage of this is Mike Bloomberg’s, which ran ads in Canadian newspapers — as well as in other countries around the world — this weekend.
“What we’re trying to do is just raise awareness of the campaign, because, you know, we’re really running two campaigns at the same time,” says John Calvelli, who serves double duty as the campaign director for New York State and Democrats Abroad. “One obviously, is to get Mike Bloomberg elected, but the other is to kind of engage the base and identify new people that we could get into the fold so that they would then vote against Donald Trump in November.”
Calvelli says it’s not something many other campaigns devote a lot of resources to. Though, of course, not many campaigns have the financial resources available to them that the billionaire former mayor of New York does. Calvelli says it’s a challenge because there are no lists of members available, so phone banks and door knocking, as in a traditional state primary, are not options. Hence the newspaper ads, alongside a campaign visit to Toronto recently by Bloomberg, and social media and word-of-mouth campaigns.
Calvelli says in 2016 Canadian residents had among the largest vote turnouts for the primary, with 3,260 people voting, just shy of 10 per cent of the total voters in what he calls the “51st state” primary.
Americans in the GTA can register with Democrats Abroad this week if they want to vote in the primary, and then have the option of voting online between Tuesday and March 10, or voting in person at one of two GTA locations. In-person voting will take place starting at 5 p.m. on Tuesday at the East of Brunswick pub in downtown Toronto and at Failte Irish Pub in Mississauga.
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Multicultural Meanderings 