Su: Institutions, not international students, are to blame for rising asylum claims

2024/11/12 Leave a comment

A really good analysis of the data, highlighting the bad actors among public and private institutions. Of course, the main responsibility lies with federal and provincial governments for allowing this situation to develop; the institutions were just responding to the conditions (and incentives) set:

…Among educational institutions, we know who the bad actors are. See table 1.

Of the 650 designated learning institutes, 301 did not have a single study permit holder apply for asylum, IRCC data shows.

On the other hand, 80 institutions had more than 100 asylum claims each, which account for 77 per cent of total asylum applications. Within that, there are 16 institutions with more than 500 asylum claims each and four institutions with more than 1,000 claims each.

https://e.infogram.com/4d844113-a432-4f28-87dc-38d8f9bf2b92?parent_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpolicyoptions.irpp.org%2Fmagazines%2Fnovember-2024%2Finstitutions-students-asylum%2F&src=embed#async_embed

The absolute number of asylum claims is high and the increase over the last seven years is steep, especially after 2022, when pandemic border restrictions were lifted. But the percentage of international students who applied for asylum is low.

https://e.infogram.com/c3343ba8-0a7d-4cde-98fb-2e0e9e6aa167?parent_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpolicyoptions.irpp.org%2Fmagazines%2Fnovember-2024%2Finstitutions-students-asylum%2F&src=embed#async_embed

However, there were 37 institutions where 10 per cent or more of study-permit holders applied for asylum. Here are the 11 where the percentage was higher than 30 per cent:

https://e.infogram.com/6e093816-71ac-490d-94a4-9edf5c9a3d71?parent_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpolicyoptions.irpp.org%2Fmagazines%2Fnovember-2024%2Finstitutions-students-asylum%2F&src=embed#async_embed

The high percentage of international students applying for asylum from these institutions could point to someone at the institution, or the institution itself, suggesting or assisting students with their applications.

Or the institution could be advertising to potential study-permit holders that applying for asylum once they arrive is a viable pathway to staying in Canada amid the changing policy environment.

Specifically, I found a handful of colleges where 100 per cent of their international students have claimed asylum in recent years.

In 2020, the Institute of Technology Development of Canada (ITD) had 10 study permits approved and 10 asylum claims made. In 2023, the Canadian Technology College had 10 study permits approved and 10 asylum claims made, while DEA Canadian College had five study permits approved and five asylum claims made.

More concerning is that while some institutions do not have a 100-per-cent asylum application rate among their study permit holders, their absolute numbers are high.

In 2024, CIMT College had 330 study permits approved and 280 asylum claims – an 85-per-cent rate.

The numbers are similar at the Canadian Career Education College, which had 265 study permits approved and 200 asylum claims made – a 75-per-cent rate. While it is unclear from the data what year the study-permit holders who applied for asylum got their study permits, the trend is worth examining…

Source: Institutions, not international students, are to blame for rising asylum claims

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Is American Economic Freedom Determined by Ancestry, Ethnicity, and Immigrant Countries of Origin?

2021/07/15 Leave a comment

Interesting study and methodology by Cato Institute that counters some of the populist and academic rhetoric:

The best potential counter argument against vastly expanding legal immigration is that immigrants might bring the less-efficient economic institutions, political systems, or cultural mores of their homelands with them to the United States. Ultimately, the United States and other rich countries are prosperous because of our economic and political institutions with some variation potentially explained by culture.

Most immigrants come from poorer countries with worse economic institutions, especially as measured by the Economic Freedom of the World Index. My co-author Benjamin Powell and I investigated whether immigrants worsened domestic economic institutions in our new book Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions, and we found it either to be unsupported by the evidence or that the evidence suggests that more immigration can sometimes increase economic freedom and improve institutions. There’s not much worry that immigrants would kill the institutional goose that the lays golden eggs of economic growth.

Some supporters of the so-called deep roots hypothesis, that events many thousands of years ago affected culture, genes, or both in such a way that our economic outcomes were basically determined long ago, are also worried that immigrants could undermine our institutions. Proponents of this view argue that it’s impossible for immigrants to not bring support for the bad economic institutions of their ancestral homelands with them. Although economic institutions have changed substantially over time, even recently in some countries, and the deep roots theory can’t explain why economic institutions change, it’s still a thoughtful counter argument.

To test whether there is support for it, we created a predicted economic freedom index for a hypothetical United States whose economic freedom is entirely a product of the economic freedom of the countries where immigrants and their ancestors came from. In other words, a native-born American of Irish descent and a native-born American of Italian descent would each support economic freedom in the United States to the extent that economic freedom exists in Ireland and Italy, respectively. For example, if half of a country’s population were of Irish ancestry and half were of Italian ancestry then the predicted economic freedom score of that country would be 7.82 ((8.13+7.51)/2) under this theory. Thus, we created an average weight of the U.S. population by ancestry, attributed the economic freedom scores of those countries to those Americans, and then took the weighted average of economic freedom for the United States in 1980 and 2019. The former date was the first year that the U.S. Census asked about ancestry.

We obtained ancestry data from the American Community Survey (ACS). We used the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index to gather data on the economic freedom of the United States and other countries over time. The EFW estimates a country’s economic freedom by looking at five variables: size of government, legal system and property rights, sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation.

The ACS data is reported using either demonyms, broader regional terms, or ethnic terms. As a result, we had to interpret some proportionally. For example, if an ACS respondent said that he was “Eastern European,” we calculated his inherent EFW score as coming from all Eastern European countries proportionally. Similarly, we combined some terms together. For example, both English and Scottish were combined into British. We then applied the EFW score for the United Kingdom to them, since EFW is reported by country. The biggest challenge was apportioning the ancestry of Black Americans who are the descendants of slaves. We know the general area where they came from but not the specific countries. Thus, we followed the general methods here for allocating black American ancestry. The different allocations made in this study are listed in Table 1.

In order to perform later calculations, we needed to determine which countries were relevant to the study. To be relevant, ACS and EFW data needed to both be available in each year. Some countries did not qualify, but their exclusions did not impact the final result as they were generally smaller countries with few historical immigrants to the United States. All demonyms and ethnic terms were interpreted by their national association to match the ACS and EFW data, but this was straight-forward.

To predict the ancestry-only EFW score for the United States, we multiplied the proportion of the population of ancestry by the EFW score in that country for that year. We then simply added up the results.

If ancestry alone determined the United States’ EFW score, it would have had a score of 6.32 in 1980 and 7.46 for 2019. In reality, the United States’ EFW was 8.13 in 1980 and 8.22 for 2019 – 1.8 and 0.76 points higher than what the ancestry-only score would predict. The economic freedom of the United States is substantially higher than its ancestry adjusted EFW score would predict if the deep roots theory were correct. For example, if American ancestry determined our EFW score then we should have the economic freedom score of Hungary in 2019 (7.44) rather than the much higher actual score of 8.22.

Interestingly, the average EFW score of the ancestral homelands of Americans and immigrants has increased considerably over time from 6.32 to 7.45. If deep roots really did drive our economic destiny by affecting economic freedom, we should be much less concerned today than in the recent past, as the ancestral homelands of immigrant groups are much freer today than in the past.

Ancestry and country of origin are not destiny, at least not in the United States in these two years.

Source: Is American Economic Freedom Determined by Ancestry, Ethnicity, and Immigrant Countries of Origin?

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

The Coronavirus Is Exposing the Limits of Populism Expertise matters. Institutions matter. There is such a thing as the global community. The system must be made to work again.

2020/03/06 Leave a comment

Indeed:

During the 2008–09 financial crisis, the stock market, global trade, and economic growth all fell by greater margins than in the same period of the Great Depression of 1929–33. However, unlike in the 1930s, governments set aside smaller disagreements, coordinating domestic policies to save the global economy. After a rocky year, the economy stabilized and a second great depression was averted. The response, not the scale of the initial shock, mattered most. As Daniel Drezner, an international-politics professor at Tufts University, put it, the system worked.

The coronavirus, which causes the disease now called COVID-19, may be another once-in-a-century event. If some of the gloomier projections of COVID-19 play out, the world will face one of its worst peacetime crises of modern times. Unfortunately, this crisis occurs in a dark political climate, more similar to that of the early ’30s, when many governments pursued nationalist, beggar-thy-neighbor policies such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, and international cooperation was very limited. Over the past decade, the world has grown more authoritarian, nationalistic, xenophobic, unilateralist, anti-establishment, and anti-expertise. The current state of politics and geopolitics has exacerbated, not stabilized, the crisis.

Wuhan officials’ failure to acknowledge the scale of the problem early on, and their suppression of medical personnel, meant that valuable time to contain the virus was lost. The international community once saw China’s growing influence in multilateral institutions as a positive development. But now that involvement is having a complicated effect on the World Health Organization (WHO), whose leadership is widely seen as overly deferential to Beijing, a stance that could compromise public trust in the organization.

China is not alone in its initial missteps. President Donald Trump, a self-acknowledged germophobe, sees the outbreak through the prism of the stock market and his own reelection. He has reduced funding for the National Security Council and had already abolished the office within the NSC dedicated to combatting epidemics. He seems to put pressure on his own officials to downplay the risk posed by the virus. Trump, and some of his officials, have actually said the virus could “have a very good ending for us” or “boost jobs” in the American economy. In South Carolina, Trump said that the virus is under control, and that any notion to the contrary is a “new hoax” by Democrats to get rid of him. But there will be no escaping reality. As the virus spreads and more people die, Trump could pivot to his authoritarian impulses, on display before he was president when he called for draconian measures during the 2015 Ebola outbreak.

Other governments are struggling too. Japan failed to deal with the rapid spread of the virus on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Cambodia let another ship, the Westerdam, dock and allowed the passengers, at least one of whom was infected, to disembark and travel on. At least seven senior Iranian officials have gotten the virus; one has already died. The virus is now spreading throughout the Gulf with potentially seismic geopolitical consequences. South Korea hesitated before taking more serious steps to isolate and stem the spread of the virus in a secretive cult.

A full-blown pandemic could create a severe economic downturn on par with 2008. Some of the world’s largest economies have ground to a halt. People are limiting their travel. Schools are closing and conferences have been canceled. The Dow Jones fell by more than 13 percent last week and it continues to be volatile. Supply chains have been disrupted and will be difficult to restart. The crisis seems all but certain to reinforce and deepen trends toward decoupling and deglobalization. If the outbreak lasts through the fall, with a lull in the summer, there could be a financial risk if some companies go bankrupt and vulnerable countries face increased borrowing costs.

In addition, information and disinformation flow freely on social media, promoting panic-buying and herd behavior. Civilian hoarding of masks and disruptions to drug supply chains could cause shortages of medical equipment and pharmaceuticals in many countries. Travel disruptions may complicate the effort to get vital supplies to the most vulnerable places.

This moment cries out for a cooperative international response. In 2008, governments generally trusted the experts—for instance, then–Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who had made the 1929 crash his life’s work, led the American response—even when their recommendations were politically unpopular. These responses were decisive and coordinated. Unfortunately, no such response has been forthcoming in recent months. The recent G20 ministerial meeting in Saudi Arabia accomplished little.

The Trump administration has shown no interest in leading an international response, preferring instead to deemphasize the risk. However, this moment demands strong diplomatic action from the United States. The government needs to recognize that this is already a global crisis with economic and security implications, as well as risks to health and human safety. National health organizations are working closely together, but the United States should be convening world leaders, whether in person or by conference, and coming up with a global response.

World leaders and their ablest advisers should be discussing and agreeing on best practices for containing the spread of the virus worldwide, not only within their own borders. This includes understanding the limits of travel bans, which can have an outsize economic impact if overused, and undertaking a massive effort to find a vaccine and ensure it is distributed widely, not just to the wealthiest few.

Leaders understandably need to reassure their citizens on the economy even as they prepare for the worst—hence the recurring rhetoric about the economy remaining strong. However, to limit the depth of the recession that would accompany a pandemic, they should institute an economic initiative, possibly including a stimulus of government investment, to keep the global economy afloat. Wall Street is certainly anticipating such a response. The Fed slashing interest rates is a start.

Stronger states must provide assistance to countries with weaker capacity to deal with the exigencies of the crisis, even if the countries are adversaries. Toward that end, the U.S. and others can look at temporarily lifting certain sanctions on vulnerable countries, such as Iran and North Korea, where necessary to fight the virus. There will be ample opportunity to reimpose the restrictions when the emergency has passed.

COVID-19 is becoming the third major crisis of the post–Cold War period, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the financial collapse of 2008. This crisis may exact a greater toll than the other two and has demonstrated the limits of populism as a method of government. Expertise matters. Institutions matter. There is such a thing as the global community. An enlightened response, even if it’s unpopular, matters. The system must be made to work again.

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,