What Was Revealed When British Officials Calculated How Much a Colonial Subject’s Life Was Worth

2024/04/25 Leave a comment

A reminder:

One hundred and five years ago, in April 1919, Mani Ram, a middle-aged dental surgeon, frantically ran to one of his son’s favorite play areas. His son, Madan Mohan, enjoyed playing at Jallianwalla Bagh, an empty plot of land in the center of Amritsar, Punjab, but had not come home. Mani Ram was worried because British officer General Reginald Dyer had just ordered his troops to cordon off Jallianwalla Bagh and open fire on all Indian subjects without warning. His officers fired 1,650 bullets at Indians, killing and injuring hundreds, including children at play.

Mani Ram found his son’s lifeless body, among hundreds of others at Jallianwalla Bagh, and carried it home.

Two years later, Mani Ram filed a claim with the imperial government for compensation for the loss of his son. The colonial government had long provided compensation payments to European families when their property was destroyed, or family members were injured or killed. For example, the British government compensated British Loyalists after the American Revolution, British enslavers after the abolition of slavery, and British subjects in India after a large wave of rebellions in 1857.

But 1921 was likely the first and only large-scale compensation for Indian families under British imperial control. British officials were adamant that the payments did not set a precedent and were eager to make them discreetly, burying the procedure, at times, in misclassified files in the archive. These files across London, Delhi, and Chandigarh show a deep racialized and gendered disparity in the value attributed to Indian and European lives, as well as the care distributed to their surviving family members or maimed subjects making such claims. Today, practices of compensation and reparations are still sorted through similar legal structures that echo those very racial disparities.

Dyer’s instruction to shoot Indians at Jallianwalla Bagh was not the only form of imperial violence Indian subjects experienced in 1919. In the early months of 1919, Indians had assembled to protest draconian British policies such as the Rowlatt Act, which granted British officials emergency powers to detain Indian subjects indefinitely without any opportunity for judicial review. In protest, some Indians resorted to attacking the colonial government’s infrastructure, such as railway lines, telegraph wires, and local banks.

British officials responded with great force. They caned, flogged, and detained Indian men and male children without warrant. British officials also declared martial law and opened fire on protesting Indians in Delhi, Bombay, Lahore, Amritsar, Kasur, and Gujrat. British pilots also air bombed parts of Gujranwala.

In the aftermath of the violence, local district magistrates utilized their discretion to allocate ₹523,571 to widows and children of five Europeans who lost their lives in Amritsar and Kasur, as well as to Europeans who were injured, shocked, or attacked during the protests. The compensation funds came from taxes and indemnities leveraged on Indians rather than British funds.

In stark contrast, state officials “distribut[ed] quietly” a sum of ₹14,050 to a handful of Indian subjects “through confidential enquiries,” fearing they should offer at least some reprieve for Indian subjects. Imperial officials hoped that this covert distribution of payments would discourage new requests and limit any precedents for compensation for state violence in the future. Most Indian families who suffered death or injury received no compensation. Those few families who did receive payment received low sums, far less than their European counterparts, and had to rebuild their lives with few resources.

The racial disparity in payments reflected the significant difference in the value placed on a European life compared to that of an Indian, with the former being valued at almost 200 times higher.

Facing global criticism for the violence in 1919, British officials in London instructed the central government in Delhi to investigate the actions of its British officers against Indians while simultaneously guaranteeing amnesty for all imperial officers. In 1920, a committee, mandated by the India Office and Government of India, delivered its final report on the wide array of violence used against Indian subjects. The committee’s four European members justified the widespread violence and brutal tactics employed by British officers in Punjab, while its three Indian members fervently disagreed.

The Government of India argued that its officers were legally permitted to use violence in all situations, including whipping, caning, forced crawling, and indefinite detainment, with only two exceptions. The first exception was Jallianwalla Bagh, where Dyer had ordered troops to fire on the gathering of Indians. The second exception was Gujranwala, a Punjabi locality where British pilots dropped bombs on colonial subjects from planes without warning.

Over the following months, Indian legislators became aware of the significant difference in compensation payments between Indians and Europeans in 1919. They demanded equal compensation for Indian families, political reforms, and an official statement of regret from the British government.

While British officials refused to issue a statement or implement substantial political reforms, they reluctantly approved limited compensation for Indians. However, they restricted the scope and amount of these payments. The decision was driven more by concerns for political stability in colonial India and Punjab than by any commitment to racial equality or justice.

Over the next two years, the Government of India and Punjab worked together to establish a compensation process for Punjabi families who had lost family members or were maimed at Jallianwalla Bagh and Gujranwala. Although the government encouraged families to come forward and file claims, many hesitated due to fears that the compensation process was merely a ploy by the imperial government to target the family members of Indians who were involved in the protests during the early months of 1919.

To determine the value of a person’s life, the Compensation Committee was instructed to utilize a method similar to actuarial science. This involved considering the individual’s annual income or projected income, as well as their life expectancy. After deducting one share for the deceased individual, the remaining payment was divided among his dependents. This process was much more limited in its scope compared to the compensation claims of European subjects in 1919.

The colonial government initially failed to include provisions for Indian women and children, believing their lives had little to no economic impact or worth to the livelihoods of families. Officials eventually agreed to assign a fixed nominal amount to account for their lives. In contrast, calculations for European women in 1919 not only considered life expectancy and annual income, but also took into account nearly all injuries and trauma they experienced.

The formal process of compensation implemented by the imperial government sometimes exacerbated the trauma experienced by Indian subjects. The Compensation Committee asked Mani Ram what the value of his 10-year-old son was. Mani Ram testified that his son was an intelligent student with ambitions that could have led him to achieve any position within the government, even that of a governor. The details of the subsequent conversation between colonial officials and Mani Ram are unknown, but we know that Mani Ram pleaded with the government not to “add insult to injury.”

The allocation given to Indians reflected the significant racial inequality that the imperial government placed on the value of its subjects’ lives. After completing their work, the Viceroy’s Council provided ₹226,000 to over 700 Indian individuals as compensation for the excessive violence inflicted by the colonial government in 1919. This sum, supported through funds collected from indemnities, fines, and taxes imposed on Indians, was less than half of what was distributed among almost a dozen European subjects.

This history, carefully uncovered from governmental records, provides us with a deeper understanding of the past, particularly how legal procedures and bureaucratic systems supported British imperial rule and marginalized the value of Indian claims and lives. But this history is also significant in our present time, as it sheds light on modern practices of compensation as demands for restitution, reparations, and reparative justice, continue.

Hardeep Dhillon is an educator and historian at the University of Pennsylvania. She recently authored “Imperial Violence, Law, and Compensation in the Age of Empire, 1919–1922,” which is open access to all readers through The Historical Journal.

Source: What Was Revealed When British Officials Calculated How Much a Colonial Subject’s Life Was Worth

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Why Did Modi Call India’s Muslims ‘Infiltrators’? Because He Could.

2024/04/24 Leave a comment

Sigh….

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his power at home secured and his Hindu-first vision deeply entrenched, has set his sights in recent years on a role as a global statesman, riding India’s economic and diplomatic rise. In doing so, he has distanced himself from his party’s staple work of polarizing India’s diverse population along religious lines for its own electoral gain.

His silence provided tacit backing as vigilante groups continued to target non-Hindu minority groups and as members of his party routinely used hateful and racist language, even in Parliament, against the largest of those groups, India’s 200 million Muslims. With the pot kept boiling, Mr. Modi’s subtle dog whistles — with references to Muslim dress or burial places — could go a long way domestically while providing enough deniability to ensure that red carpets remained rolled out abroad for the man leading the world’s largest democracy.

Just what drove the prime minister to break with this calculated pattern in a fiery campaign speech on Sunday — when he referred to Muslims by name as “infiltrators” with “more children” who would get India’s wealth if his opponents took power — has been hotly debated. It could be a sign of anxiety that his standing with voters is not as firm as believed, analysts said. Or it could be just a reflexive expression of the kind of divisive religious ideology that has fueled his politics from the start.

But the brazenness made clear that Mr. Modi sees few checks on his enormous power. At home, watchdog institutions have been largely bent to the will of his Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. Abroad, partners increasingly turn a blind eye to what Mr. Modi is doing in India as they embrace the country as a democratic counterweight to China.

“Modi is one of the world’s most skilled and experienced politicians,” said Daniel Markey, a senior adviser in the South Asia program at the United States Institute of Peace. “He would not have made these comments unless he believed he could get away with it.”

Mr. Modi may have been trying to demonstrate this impunity, Mr. Markey said, “to intimidate the B.J.P.’s political opponents and to show them — and their supporters — just how little they can do in response.”…

Source: Why Did Modi Call India’s Muslims ‘Infiltrators’? Because He Could.

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Regg Cohn: India’s anti-Muslim citizenship law is discriminatory and disappointing — but not surprising

2024/04/04 Leave a comment

One of the better articles on the law:

…Modi’s BJP followers (and their historical antecedents) argue they are not merely throwing off the yoke of British colonial rule, which retreated in 1947. No, his supporters insist they are uprooting — decolonizing — a more enduring form of historical domination by India’s Moghul conquerors who imported Islam centuries ago, long before the British era.

That is one of the complications of the decolonization paradigm — the push for purification can easily go further back in time. People can keep peeling back layers of colonization and conquest until they reach their target, which is why Modi’s Hinduization movement is less concerned with the idea of white supremacy than Islamic hegemony.

There’s yet another conceptual challenge for Hindutva’s critics (of which I am one). India is far from alone in embracing religiosity or ethnicity as the measure of who shall qualify for citizenship or be disqualified, who will be welcomed with open arms or herded into closed camps.

Israel is increasingly criticized for religious discrimination for granting automatic sanctuary to Jewish immigrants under its Law of Return, enacted after its founding in 1948 (in the post-Holocaust era when Jews still faced pogroms in parts of Eastern Europe and persecution much of the Middle East). That Israel, as a Jewish state, privileges Jews is one of the reasons many critics claim “Zionism is racism.”

Yet it is a curious double standard. For India is only the latest in a long line of countries that prioritize religion in a way that Canadians — who welcome people of all faiths — perhaps cannot fathom.

Religion has been the raison d’être of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Lebanon has kept its Palestinian refugees in camps since they fled their homes in 1948, long restricting their permitted occupations lest an influx of Sunni Muslims alter the country’s delicate religious balance — or compete for coveted jobs (after protests, those restrictions were partly eased in recent years).

Bhutan, a little-known kingdom nestled in the Himalayas along India’s northern border, has long been seen as a Buddhist paradise despite its mistreatment of Hindu refugees fleeing strife in neighbouring Nepal (shunting them into camps for years without letting them settle, for fear of changing the kingdom’s ethnic makeup). Germany has long recognized ethnicity for citizenship, regardless of place of birth — granting automatic status to those with German blood who “resettle” in Deutschland.

Against that backdrop, India’s new discriminatory citizenship law is surely disappointing, but hardly surprising — and assuredly not unique. It merely reminds us of the complexity of ethnic identity and religious rivalry around the world — and how historical grievances are so easily transformed into political grudges and legal cudgels.

Source: India’s anti-Muslim citizenship law is discriminatory and disappointing — but not surprising

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Article of interest recap

2024/03/25 Leave a comment

For the 1st time, Canada will set targets for temporary residents After trimming growth in Permanent Residents, imposing caps on international students, Minister Miller reverses course again and reduces the number of temporary foreign workers. Taken together, marks a significant repudiation of previous decisions and ministers, ironically making it easier for a possible future conservative government to impose further limits should it choose to do so. And including temporary foreign workers and international students in the annual levels plan is long overdue.

The Coalition for a Better Future’s report Fragile Growth: An Urgent Need to Get the Basics Right reiterated productivity and related economic challenges.

Scotia Bank’s Raising the Bar, Not Just Lowering the Number: Canada’s Immigration Policy Confronts Critical Choices makes the case for a charter focus on economic immigration and increasing productivity.

Parissa Mahboubi’s Canada’s immigration system isn’t living up to its potential. Here’s how to fix it provides a familiar list of recommendations, along with the puzzling one for more business immigrants given that government is notoriously bad is assessing entrepreneurship as previous programs have indicated.Life in Canada is ‘more expensive’ than most immigrants expected, new poll finds. Not surprising findings from Leger, highlighting a declining value proposition for immigrants.

Daniel Bertrand of the ICC argues Stop undervaluing the contributions that international students make to Canada, noting the need for “a much more strategic approach, modelled after the economic immigration process, with a points system that prioritizes these more valuable areas of study.”

No surprise that Trudeau rules out Quebec’s request for full control over immigration (Trudeau dit non à confier les pleins pouvoirs en immigration au Québec) with Michel David noting the Les limites du bluff. More detailed explanations of the reason behind the refusal in Marc Miller émet de fortes réserves sur les demandes de Québec en immigration, my favourite being, with respect to family class, « C’est très difficile de légiférer l’amour, [et de] demander à quelqu’un d’épouser quelqu’un qui parle uniquement français ».

Citizenship

Using coercion, Russia has successfully imposed its citizenship in Ukraine’s occupied territories, horrific example of citizenship as an instrument of war and denial of identity.

India’s new citizenship law for religious minorities leaves Muslims out, confirms the Modi governments overall approach of Hindu nationalism.

Omar Khan, in Ramadan heralds a political awakening for Canadian Muslims, notes the need for political responsibly among Muslim and other Canadians “it’s a responsibility to recognize that proper understanding between communities comes through dialogue, not ultimatums. There should be no litmus tests for elected officials wishing to address Muslim congregations. Those with divergent opinions should be engaged, not frozen out.”

David Akin assesses A closer look at the growing diversity of Conservatives under Poilievre, highlighting the party’s recruiting efforts (and quoting me).

Other

John McWhorter continues his contrarian streak in No, the SAT Isn’t Racist, making convincing arguments in favour of standardized testing.

Marsha Lederman highlights the increased censorship in the Exodus from literary magazine Guernica reveals the censorship the Israel-Hamas war has wrought in terms of free and honest artistic expression.

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Zachary Paikin: Canada’s leaders must take the dangers of diaspora politics seriously

2024/03/07 Leave a comment

From my time in the foreign service years ago, virtually all governments have struggle to define the national interest beyond the general, and have struggled with diaspora politics to varying degrees, whether in terms of response to humanitarian disasters and conflicts (e.g., measures for Ukrainians compared to other countries) or “imported conflicts” like the current Israel-Hamas one.

Valid to argue for focusing on what brings us together. But beyond general bromides, and process suggestions for a national dialogue on core national interests, it is unclear how such a process would have a meaningful impact given a fragmented media and social media landscape, not to the political incentives for community targeting. And as the Liberal government has found out with respect to Israel-Gaza, extremely difficult to have clear and consistent messaging and actions:

A massive spike in antisemitic incidents across the country following Hamas’ gruesome October 7th attacks has shocked many Canadians. But these events are only the latest example of how diaspora politics are increasingly putting our national cohesion and international engagement at risk.

The disorder we have witnessed in Canadian cities in recent months, which just this weekend succeeded in shutting down an event between two G7 leaders at the Art Gallery of Ontario, comes on the heels of a major break in Canada-India relations following the killing of Sikh nationalist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, as well as the fiasco surrounding the invitation of former Waffen SS member Yaroslav Hunka to Parliament.

The implication seems clear: An increasingly multipolar international order—one featuring assertive new powers and competing global interests—risks fracturing our diverse society and rendering our foreign policy impotent. To avoid this outcome, we need to do two things. 

First, our leaders need to repurpose our public discourse about multiculturalism toward highlighting the ties that bind Canadians together, rather than focusing on the ways in which we are diverse and different from one another. 

Continual intimidation, harassment, and violence against Jewish businesses, neighbourhoods, and community institutions since October 7th has been unnerving and dangerous. I certainly never thought I would live to see the Avenue/Wilson intersection in Toronto—where I spent the first five years of my life—labelled a “Zionist-infested area,” nor to witness a crowd outside the Montreal Holocaust Museum earlier this week cheer as those inside the building were called “rats.”

The face of Canada has changed considerably since multiculturalism was first adopted more than a half-century ago. One day after introducing the policy in Parliament in October 1971, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s maiden speech to outline his vision of a multicultural Canada was made to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

Ten years later, in 1981, Jews still outnumbered Muslims nearly four-to-one in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). Yet as of the 2021 census, Muslims accounted for more than 10 percent of the Toronto CMA, now outnumbering Jews by roughly the same four-to-one margin.

Multiculturalism is a unique Canadian success story. And it remains one of the most important assets we have to grow the foundations of our national power and prosperity in an increasingly post-Western international order. But the dramatic change in the demographic composition of Canada over the past four decades means that our population has become subject to a wider range of pressures and ideas. If we fail to pair our growing diversity with a common narrative, then we risk seeing Canadians pitted against one another—as indeed is already occurring—and the whole multicultural edifice being brought down in the process.

Leaders from all parties need to get behind a unifying message, rooted in the founding wisdom of our constitutional order: Canada stands for peace, order, and good government. That means that acts of intimidation and harassment will not be tolerated. But it also means we cannot allow conflicts in distant lands to divide us and shape who we are as Canadians.

This domestic message will resonate even more strongly if accompanied by an adjustment in the way we conduct our foreign policy. Research I have conducted for the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy shows how our political class has difficulty articulating a common idea of Canada’s national interests, beyond platitudes such as outdated conceptions of our “role in the world” as a “middle power” or our desire to be “seen to be a good ally.”

Unable to focus resources and attention on clearly defined core interests, our leaders all too often gear their statements toward domestic audiences for political gain. The current Israel-Hamas war is a case in point: given that Canada’s ability to influence the conflict is negligible, foreign policy statements are used to satisfy demands from this or that constituency. Diversity management takes the place of diplomacy.

A new discourse focused on what does or does not constitute a core national interest would encourage ethnocultural communities to think about foreign policy not as Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, or Ukrainian Canadians, but rather simply as Canadians. Owing to Canada’s location on the map, challenges in the Arctic, Asia, and Europe must rank far ahead of the Middle East when it comes to allocating limited resources in the pursuit of our interests.

By the same token, we should oppose antisemitism not just as Jewish Canadians, but because it offends who we are as Canadians: a civilized country based on peace, order, and good government for all. With a multipolar world exerting growing pressure on our multicultural tapestry, our leaders should focus less on moral posturing toward a conflict over which they have little influence and more on what kind of society we want to build here at home.

Dr. Zachary Paikin (@zpaikin) is a senior fellow with the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, a Canadian foreign policy think tank.

Source: Zachary Paikin: Canada’s leaders must take the dangers of diaspora politics seriously

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ICYMI: Canada’s immigration loophole abused by an airline employee who allegedly admitted Indians with no visa

2024/03/04 Leave a comment

Ever wonder why there are secondary checks from CBSA officials or contractors?

A former British Airways employee has allegedly fled to India after being arrested for allegedly helping Indian citizens get around immigration laws so they could claim asylum in Canada.

As initially reported in The Times of London on Tuesday, the employee who worked at Heathrow airport in London, U.K., is said to have enabled people without proper documentation to get on flights to Canada so that they could claim asylum upon entering the country. He allegedly charged £25,000 per person or about $43,000. The alleged scam is estimated to have made 3 million pounds or over $5.1 million.

After taking the money from the Canada-bound asylum seekers, the 24-year-old former employee allegedly told them to fly from India to the U.K. on a temporary visa.

According to the Times of London, Canadian immigration officials raised concerns after noticing an influx of people flying to Toronto or Vancouver without proper documentation, and claiming asylum.

Normally, airline employees would check if passengers are eligible to fly to their destination, but, using his position at British Airways, the 24-year-old was allegedly able to falsely claim that his victims had the proper documentation for travel to Canada. The former employee’s process was allegedly to make sure that the prospective immigrants came to his check-in desk at the airport. Later, he would allegedly meet them again during the boarding process and falsely report they had the correct documents a second time.

The former British Airways employee was arrested on Jan. 6, but after making bail, he and his partner, who also worked for British Airways, allegedly fled to India, where he reportedly owns multiple properties and is still on the run from U.K. and Indian authorities. If he is captured, India and the U.K. have an extradition treaty.

British Airways, said in a statement to National Post that they “are assisting the authorities with their investigation.”

This is not the first time that Indian citizens have entered Canada on false pretences. Over the past half-decade, dozens of Indian students faced deportation after unknowingly using falsified acceptance letters to Canadian universities.

National Post reached out to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada for comment, but did not hear back before publication.

Source: Canada’s immigration loophole abused by an airline employee who allegedly admitted Indians with no visa

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Looking for an ‘IELTS clear girl’: Why Canada’s international student reforms may spoil these kinds of marriages in India

2024/02/08 Leave a comment

Interesting read and suspect more of these stories will come out as the new restrictions on international students come into effect:

At first glance, it looks just like any matrimonial profile, detailing the age, height and education background of the boy looking for a match. But then there’s a twist: Only an “IELTS clear girl” should bother responding.

In another ad, a young woman with a bachelor’s degree in science is looking for a groom interested in moving to Canada and willing to bear all expenses. And her biggest asset, as advertised: “IELTS 7 band.”

IELTS stands for the International English Language Testing System, one of the world’s most popular English proficiency tests for higher education and immigration — and an entry requirement to come to Canada. International students need a minimum overall score of 6 in writing, reading, listening and speaking English for admission to undergraduate and diploma programs in this country.

A perfect match would mean the bride could get the boy’s family to pay for her tuition and living costs of studying abroad. In exchange, the groom could come to Canada on an open work permit, accompanying the spouse. And they’d both hope to one day earn their permanent residence here.

“These are real marriages and there’s nothing illegal about it,” said Rajinder Taggar, an investigative reporter based in Chandigarh, India. “You can find these matrimonial ads very easily, in all the newspapers. People make no secret about it.”

But the practice of so-called “IELTS marriages” is coming to an end, quickly, after Canada’s announcement last week to tighten up the international student program. Among the many changes made by Ottawa is stop issuing work permits to the spouses of international students in undergraduate and diploma programs.

“The boy marries the girl and his family puts money in her studies, so the spouse can come,” Vinay Hari, a prominent education agent based in Jalandhar, told the Star.  “Now that will stop. The girl will not get the money for the education in Canada.

“They will file divorces and their relationships will be terminated. It’s already happening.”

Almost 40 per cent of Canada’s international students these days come from India, where prospective students are being hardest hit by Canada’s recent changes to the international student program.

Last month, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced a plan to slash the number of new study permits issued across Canada this year by 35 per cent from last year’s level, to 364,000, while leaving the number of applicants accepted in master’s and doctoral programs, as well as those admitted to primary and secondary schools, uncapped.

Other new or recent measures include:

• Effective on Jan. 1, doubling the cost-of-living financial requirement for study permit applicants from $10,000 to $20,635 in addition to their first year of tuition and travel costs;

• Starting Sept. 1, stopping to issue post-graduation work permits to international students who complete programs provided under so-called Public College-Private Partnerships;

• In the weeks ahead, the spouses of most international students will no longer be granted work permits, with the exception of those studying in graduate schools or in a professional program such as medicine or law.

These three measures are intended to raise the bar and plug the incentives for people to take advantage of the international student program in what Miller has described as a “backdoor entry” into Canada.

According to Taggar, the Indian journalist, IELTS marriages have been happening for some time, but they became more common with Canada’s open policy to welcome international students and the marketing by unscrupulous agents to promote international studies as an immigration scheme.

“Girls work harder and are smarter. And they pass the IELTS exam,” said Taggar, who has published in the Tribune, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, and Times of India. “Some of them come from poor families but they are good at studies. The boys’ families will pay for the education. They want to come to Canada and become permanent residents. That’s all.”

Removing the spousal work permit for students in undergraduate and college programs, which are normally cheaper and shorter than postgraduate studies, would deter that kind of exploitation of the international student program, he said.

Hari, the education agent, said he has received more than 100 inquiries in the past week from prospective students who asked to withdraw their applications for programs delivered under public-private college partnerships because they will no longer grant postgraduation work permits.

These partnerships are mostly between smaller public colleges in remote communities in the province and private colleges in Greater Toronto, where international students prefer to live — prompted by the public institutions’ need to stay afloat amid declining domestic enrolment and provincial funding cut.

The business model allows taxpayer-funded colleges to provide curriculum at a fee to private career college partners, who can hire their own non-unionized instructors to deliver the academic programs in the region.

Graduates from the private colleges then get a public college credential, which made them eligible for a postgraduate work permit as a pathway for permanent residence.

After the Jan. 22 changes, “they told us, ‘Sir, I don’t want to go to a (public-private partnership college). Transfer my application to the (public college) main campus,'” Hari said. “They don’t want to go to Hanson College in Toronto or Brampton. They want to go to Cambrian College in Sudbury.”

Over the last five years, said Hari, Canada has gained a bad reputation in India as a destination for immigration through education. As a result, many Indian students are enrolled in college diploma programs that give them quick access to work permits but won’t necessarily advance their employment and career prospects.

He said serious learners now tend to prefer the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, while those who want to immigrate come to study in Canada.

“Thousands of these students are coming for these general business programs,” said Hari, who has helped more than 11,000 students come to study in Canada in the last 14 years. “Did Canada produce that many businessmen and entrepreneurs?

“This immigration scam has given students the opportunity to work full time. So students are not coming but labourers are coming.“

Hari said many prospective students and their families in India are panicking in the wake of Miller’s announcement because the price tag has now gone even higher, with education agents quickly shifting to promote and market the master’s programs in Canada.

“Canada has to support the quality education. They have to fund public colleges and universities,” he said. “The PPPs have created a mess and I think Canada is now on track again.”

Nitin Chawla, an education agent and immigration consultant based in Ludhiana in Punjab state, said he’s already seeing the impacts of Canada’s new rules as inquiries about Canada have slowed down and most people walking into his office are now exploring the opportunities to study in other countries, such as New Zealand.

While these changes might be good for Canada because they’ll raise the qualifying requirements and help weed out the “weaker” students, Chawla said they are going to have ripple effects on the consulting industry and employment in India, where tens of thousands of people make a living selling immigration to this country.

“Here in Punjab, the first word a baby learns is Canada,” he said. “People will not stop going to Canada, but the number will drop very badly. People have already started withdrawing (visa application) files.”

He predicted many people in India will lose their consulting and recruitment jobs, including some of his 40 staffers, and so will many employed in the postsecondary education sector in Canada.

In a recent entry on his blog, Alex Usher, an expert on higher education, said the federal crackdown on the public-private college partnerships — upwards of 125,000 international students in Greater Toronto — is going to take at least $1.5 billion in revenue out of the hands of Ontario colleges.

“Without the promise of a post-graduation work visa, it is hard to see how those spots are going to stay filled,” wrote Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates. “I’d wager a couple of the northern colleges, who used PPPs as a way to escape the brutal economics of teaching in the more sparsely populated north, will be in need of a bailout soon.”

Source: Looking for an ‘IELTS clear girl’: Why Canada’s international student reforms may spoil these kinds of marriages in India

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What’s behind the rise in undocumented Indian immigrants crossing U.S. borders on foot – NBC News

2023/11/16 Leave a comment

Of interest:

From October 2022 to this September, the 2023 fiscal year, there were 96,917 Indians encountered — apprehended, expelled or denied entry — having entered the U.S. without papers. It marks a fivefold increase from the same period from 2019 to 2020, when there were just 19,883.

Immigration experts say several factors are at play, including an overall growth in global migration since the pandemic, oppression of minority communities in India, smugglers’ use of increasingly sophisticated and in-demand methods of getting people to America, and extreme visa backlogs.

The number of undocumented Indians in the U.S. has been climbing since borders opened post-Covid, with 30,662 encountered in the 2021 fiscal year and 63,927 in the 2022 fiscal year.

Out of the nearly 97,000 encounters this year, 30,010 were at the Canadian border and 41,770 at the Southern border.

“The Southern border has just become a staging ground for migrants from all parts of the world to come to the U.S. most quickly,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a lawyer and the director of non-partisan research group Migration Policy Institute’s New York office. “Why would you wait for a visitor visa in Delhi if you can make it faster to the Southern border?”

The Canadian border, on the other hand, has large stretches that are virtually unguarded at times, said Gaurav Khanna, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego, whose research concentrates on immigration.

While not all routes look the same, a journey from India to the U.S. might take migrants on several legs, all while being passed among various facilitators.

“People will get you to, let’s say, the Middle East, or people will get you to Europe,” Chishti said. “The next journey from there would be to Africa. If not Africa, maybe then to South America. Then the next person will get you from South America to the south of Mexico. Then from the south of Mexico to the northern cities of Mexico, and then the next person will get you over to the U.S.”

Long, treacherous journeys often land migrants in limbo, facing overwhelmed immigration systems, he said. CBP told NBC News that families coming to the U.S. illegally will face removal.

“No one should believe the lies of smugglers through these travel agencies. The fact is that individuals and families without a legal basis to remain in the United States will be removed,” a CBP spokesperson said.

But when those migrants are coming from across an ocean, experts say, the reality is far more complicated.

“You can easily turn people back to Mexico — that’s their country, ‘make a U-turn,’” Chishti said. “But you can’t deport people to faraway places that easily. Mexico won’t take them. Why would Mexico take an Indian?”

….

Source: What’s behind the rise in undocumented Indian immigrants crossing U.S. borders on foot – NBC News

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Akshay Kumar reveals why he got Canadian citizenship in the first place – Hindustan Times

2023/10/13 Leave a comment

Former “citizen of convenience,” Indian film star Akshay Kumar:

For several years, Akshay Kumar had Canadian citizenship. He faced backlash over it, and this year became an Indian citizen. He has now spoken about the matter.

Actor Akshay Kumar, who earlier had Canadian citizenship, has opened up about why he had opted for it in the first place. Speaking with news agency ANI, Akshay revealed that he took the step because his films ‘were not doing well at one time’ and he gave 13 to 14 flops”. Akshay often faced criticism over his Canadian citizenship. On Independence Day this year, the actor had announced that he was now an Indian citizen. (Also Read | Akshay Kumar gets Indian citizenship, shares proof on Twitter)

Akshay on becoming a Canadian
Akshay told ANI, “I became a Canadian because my films were not doing well at one time and I gave 13 to 14 flop films. At that time, my friend used to live in Canada and he said you come here and we will work on something. My friend had offered me that we would do cargo business together. I said okay my films are also not going well and a person has to work, no matter where he is. When I started living in Toronto, I got a Canadian passport. In between that, two films were left for release. After the two movies got released it became a big superhit. I told him that I was going back. Then I got more films and reached here today. But I never thought people got a hold of it, it was just a travel document. I just pay my taxes, and I am the highest taxpayer.”

Akshay on Indian citizenship

Speaking on getting Indian citizenship, he said, “For 9 to 10 years I didn’t go there. It’s a very nice place and one of my best friends is there. I decided that I should take my citizenship. It was just a coincidence that I had received a letter on 15th August that I had got citizenship. But it is not just a passport, it is your mind, it is your heart, it’s your soul that has to be Indian. What is the point if I do have an Indian passport but my soul mind and heart are not Indian?”
Akshay got Indian citizenship this year
Earlier, Akshay had shared a picture of his official government documents, proving that he has finally got his Indian citizenship. “Dil aur citizenship, dono Hindustani (Heart and citizenship, both Indian). Happy Independence Day! Jai Hind,” Akshay had captioned the post.

Akshay had spoken about backlash in 2019
Akshay has faced a lot of criticism on social media platforms for holding Canadian citizenship in the past. In 2019, after receiving backlash for his Canadian citizenship, Akshay issued a statement on his official X (formerly known as Twitter) account, stating that he does not understand the negativity around the subject.

Source: Akshay Kumar reveals why he got Canadian citizenship in the first place – Hindustan Times

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John Ivison: Tolerating the glorification of terror and slaughter is societal suicide

2023/10/12 Leave a comment

Of note:

Sukhdool Singh, an alleged gangster, was gunned down in Winnipeg last month, in a tit-for-tat killing between rival gangs.

Singh was wanted in India for extortion and murder, and was alleged to have links to the Khalistan Tiger Force, which has been designated a terror organization by the Indian government. He is said to have escaped to Canada on a forged passport in 2017 and India has been trying, unsuccessfully, to extradite him ever since.

Singh’s case is instructive because it is at the heart of the dispute between Canada and India. The Indians say Canada has offered a safe haven for Khalistani terrorists in return for votes from the Sikh community.

Canada says that its hands are tied because freedom of speech is protected under the Charter of Rights.

By its actions, the Canadian government has also endorsed the recent findings of the House of Commons justice and human rights committee that concluded suspects could be abused and tortured if returned to India and a host of other countries. Only six people were extradited to India between 2002 and 2020 and none of them were suspected Khalistani terrorists.

Canada is seen as being soft on terror, with some justification.

Its record on clamping down on terror financing is abysmal, as noted by B.C.’s Cullen commission into money laundering, which found that the federal Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC) is ill-equipped to share intelligence with law enforcement. Proof of FINTRAC’s impotence is the lack of any charges laid between 2009 and 2016, even though it uncovered 683 transactions linked to terror financing

The government is in the process of beefing up its efforts against money laundering and terror financing, with a number of proposed legislative changes aimed at giving FINTRAC and law enforcement more powers.

But Canada’s perennial balancing act with rights and freedoms leads to much hand-wringing. For example, the Canada Revenue Agency has been accused of unfairly targeting Muslim-led charities, leading to calls for the agency to suspend its terror-financing investigative unit. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his sympathy for what he called the systemic Islamophobia in the CRA.

However, the atrocities that the world has witnessed over the course of the past weekend in Israel may tilt that balance away from the indulgence that has prevailed.

The scenes that played out on Saturday night in Mississauga, with joyous crowds cheering and honking horns, as if their team had just won the World Cup, were abhorrent. This was the glorification of the mass murder of children, such as the 40 dead babies discovered at the Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern Israel. This was celebration of Hamas’ deliberate and systemic targeting of civilians to kill as many as possible.

To his credit, Trudeau renounced such scenes in his remarks at a Jewish community centre in Ottawa. “The glorification of death and violence and terror has no place anywhere, especially here in Canada. Hamas terrorists aren’t a resistance, they’re not freedom fighters, they are terrorists and no one in Canada should be supporting them, much less celebrating them.”

Canada has a law against displaying hate — Section 319 of the Criminal Code, which says that anyone who incites hatred against an identifiable group where incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of an indictable offence.

But such is the power of section 2b of the Charter when it comes to freedom of expression, it has been used sparingly — just 20 times between 2001 and 2019.

That is a good thing. I am proud to live in a country where truth cannot be put down by persecution. As John Stuart Mill said about free speech, conflicting doctrines often share the truth between them.

But it is quite another thing to witness fellow citizens lionize rape and murder.

In 2015, the Senate committee on national security and defence released a report in the wake of the terror attack on Parliament Hill.

It made a number of recommendations that were never enacted, including establishing a “no visit” list of identified ideological radicals and working in Muslim communities to create an effective counter-narrative to Islamic fundamentalism.

But one conclusion that it drew has special resonance today — that our hate laws should be updated to ban the glorification of terrorists, terrorist acts and terrorist symbols. The committee said it recognized issues with the Charter of Rights but noted that France and U.K. have similar laws.

There are clearly issues with what constitutes “glorification” — a grey zone where there may not be specific calls for action. France’s law appears to go too far: one 25-year-old man was handed a suspended sentence for scribbling “Vive Daesh” (aka ISIL) on a toilet wall.

Yet, antisemitic chants calling for the destruction of Israel, or in the case of Canada’s Khalistanis, building a carnival float that celebrates the assassination of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi (as happened in Toronto in 2023) create the conditions for violence. The British law includes a clause that specifically says the offence occurs when members of the public might reasonably be expected to infer that what is being glorified is being proposed as conduct that should be emulated.

The introduction of such legislation may go a long way to healing the rift with India — and that cannot be done quickly enough.

We are entering a period of what historian Niall Ferguson has predicted will be a “cascade of conflict,” where Russia, Iran and China will do their best to overturn the international order by testing a fiscally overstretched America in three theatres: Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. It will be no surprise to anyone if China makes an illegal move in the South China Sea in the coming weeks.

Canada needs to recognize that, in W.B. Yeats’ words, anarchy is loosed upon the world and innocence is drowned; that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

We need to stand with our allies, even if we don’t often like what they do. India’s Narendra Modi is a thin-skinned chauvinist; Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu may be corrupt and is certainly incompetent.

As the former Shin Bet chief, Ami Ayalon, told Le Figaro, the Netanyahu government is largely responsible for the divisions that created an opportunity for Hamas, with its controversial push for justice reforms and a policy that marginalized the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

But these flaws pale in comparison to the what the great autocracies would have in store for us.

I’m haunted by a quote in Avi Shavit’s superb history of Israel: My Promised Land, where he talks about the vitality of the nation. “And yet, there is always the fear that one day, daily life will freeze like Pompeii’s.”

For too many Israelis, life did indeed freeze this weekend. The existential threat there is palpable. Canada cannot allow pluralism and reasonable accommodation to plant the seeds of our self-destruction.

Source: John Ivison: Tolerating the glorification of terror and slaughter is societal suicide

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