Kelly McParland: Of the long list of Liberal blunders, immigration takes the cake

2024/11/20 Leave a comment

Reasonable assessment:

Canada stands out amid the fray, however. For decades, Canadians expressed a pride approaching smugness in the high levels of support for ever-rising immigration quotas and the civility of the welcome offered newcomers. There was widespread agreement that immigration brought with it growth, energy, new ideas, broad experience and an array of benefits in food, music, style, the arts and other cultural attractions.

No more. The Trudeau government now sees electoral advantage  — or more likely necessity — in hot-footing it to the front of the deportation parade, as if it weren’t responsible for the policies that produced the parade in the first place. In a sharp reversal of previous positions,  Immigration Minister Marc Miller proclaimed last week in Vancouver that whatever it was Ottawa thought its border policies were achieving was no longer operative.

“It’s clear that the age of unlimited supply of cheap foreign labour is over, and I think that is a good thing,” he announced.

“Bringing the numbers down, I think, is very important to making sure that we aren’t simply chasing short-term gain for a lot of long-term pain.”

Short-term gain is precisely what the Liberal approach to immigration has been all about. Annual admissions have almost doubled since 2015. The government saw it as a way to secure reliable votes from grateful newcomers, provide abundant low-wage labour, fill schools with foreign students paying high tuitions, and support Liberals’ eagerness to portray themselves as caring, tolerant and good-hearted.

Instead, the rise in population is blamed for a housing crisis, college campuses have become puppy mills for overcharged students, tens of thousands of newcomers have seen their hopes of a permanent new life in Canada dashed, and Canada’s international reputation has been badly sullied. The number of students seeking asylum has grown from about 1,800 in 2018 to more than 12,500 in 2023. In the first nine months of this year, there had already been almost 14,000 requests. More than 1.2 million people granted temporary residency are being told to leave by next year in what would be an unprecedented outflow. The backlog in refugee claims has reached 260,000, creating a lineup so lengthy it allows claimants to spend additional years in the country awaiting their hearing.

A big problem with well-meaning, but ill-considered, social programs is that they bring the aim itself into disrepute when they go wrong. Eight years ago, when Justin Trudeau was keen on differentiating his views from a bellicose new U.S. president named Trump, he fired off a message obviously intended to reflect Canada’s superior righteousness.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” he tweeted.

The day after Trump was voted back into the White House this month, all that had changed.

“Canadians quite rightly believe that it needs to be a decision of Canada and Canadians who comes to our country and who doesn’t,” asserted Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.

“That is something that’s really important, it’s fundamental.”

Source: Kelly McParland: Of the long list of Liberal blunders, immigration takes the cake

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Trump administration rescinds rule barring foreign students from taking all classes online

2020/07/16 Leave a comment

A rare but welcome reversal of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies:

Facing eight federal lawsuits and opposition from hundreds of universities, the Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded a rule that would have required international students to transfer or leave the country if their schools held classes entirely online because of the pandemic.

The decision was announced at the start of a hearing in a federal lawsuit in Boston brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said federal immigration authorities agreed to pull the July 6 directive and “return to the status quo.”

A lawyer representing the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said only that the judge’s characterization was correct.

The announcement brings relief to thousands of foreign students who had been at risk of being deported from the country, along with hundreds of universities that were scrambling to reassess their plans for the fall in light of the policy.

Under the policy, international students in the U.S. would have been forbidden from taking all their courses online this fall. New visas would not have been issued to students at schools planning to provide all classes online, which includes Harvard. Students already in the U.S. would have faced deportation if they didn’t transfer schools or leave the country voluntarily.

Immigration officials issued the policy last week, reversing earlier guidance from March 13 telling colleges that limits around online education would be suspended during the pandemic. University leaders believed the rule was part of President Donald Trump’s effort to pressure the nation’s schools and colleges to reopen this fall even as new virus cases rise.

The policy drew sharp backlash from higher education institutions, with more than 200 signing court briefs supporting the challenge by Harvard and MIT. Colleges said the policy would put students’ safety at risk and hurt schools financially. Many schools rely on tuition from international students, and some stood to lose millions of dollars in revenue if the rule had taken hold.

Harvard and MIT were the first to contest the policy, but at least seven other federal suits had been filed by universities and states opposing the rule.

Harvard and MIT argued that immigration officials violated procedural rules by issuing the guidance without justification and without allowing the public to respond. They also argued that the policy contradicted ICE’s March 13 directive telling schools that existing limits on online education would be suspended “for the duration of the emergency.”

The suit noted that Trump’s national emergency declaration has not been rescinded and that virus cases are spiking in some regions.

Immigration officials, however, argued that they told colleges all along that any guidance prompted by the pandemic was subject to change. They said the rule was consistent with existing law barring international students from taking classes entirely online. Federal officials said they were providing leniency by allowing students to keep their visas even if they study online from abroad.

Source: Trump administration rescinds rule barring foreign students from taking all classes online

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,