Urback: In preparation for Trump 2.0, Ottawa must broadcast that our border is closed, Kheiriddin: In the age of Trump, Canada must stem the refugee tide

2024/11/14 Leave a comment

Two commentaries with similar suggestions:

…So what can Canada do? Start sucking up to Mr. Trump to try to protect the revised STCA? Hire more officers, more border control agents, more immigration staff? Build a wall, and make Mexico pay for it? Two of three are probably prudent actions. But there is something else Canada can do in the interim that is much more simple: start broadcasting, now, that asylum-seekers from the U.S. will be denied entry to Canada.

In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rather infamously published a welcome to migrants of the world, tweeting, “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.” To now broadcast the opposite – through tweets, diplomatic missions, perhaps even advertisements – would be entirely off-brand for a government whose belief in its own sanctimony is probably powerful enough to run cars, but extraordinarily necessary considering the circumstances. Asylum-seekers risk their lives with human smugglers, treacherous conditions, and a dearth of resources and services when and if they do make it to Canada. It wouldn’t be fair to them, nor is it fair to those already in the country, for the government to leave the misconception that Canada can accommodate unchecked.

Source: In preparation for Trump 2.0, Ottawa must broadcast that our border is closed

…To discourage people from coming, the government must remove the 14-day exemption and require all refugee applications to be made solely from outside of Canada. It must also allocate more resources to speed up claim processing times.

Critics will say that this will drive migrants underground, like in the U.S., where they cross the border illegally and never seek status for fear of being deported. This is a risk notably in Canada’s seven designated “sanctuary cities,” where illegal migrants can receive services and benefits without having to disclose their status: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, Ajax, Edmonton, Hamilton and London. Since cities are legally creatures of the province, Ottawa needs to cooperate with provincial government to find a legal means of revoking or outlawing the designation.

Unfortunately, we may not get a lot of cooperation from our neighbours. American cities have already encouraged migrants to leave, including to Canada. All the more reason to send a tough signal now that we won’t let this happen, before Trump takes office — and before the migration tsunami hits.

Source: Tasha Kheiriddin: In the age of Trump, Canada must stem the refugee tide

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Immigration minister says ‘not everyone is welcome’ in response to concerns about Trump deportation plan

2024/11/13 Leave a comment

Needed message from the minister and lawyers identifying a possible loophole:

…On Monday, several immigration lawyers urged Ottawa to change a policy that allows migrants fleeing from the U.S. to claim asylum here if they cross the border illegally and evade the authorities for two weeks.

In 2017, Haitians streamed into Canada from the U.S. after the first Trump administration ended temporary protected status for Haitians who had fled to the U.S. The policy sparked an influx of Haitians claiming asylum at the “irregular” Roxham Road border crossing into Quebec.

After talks with the U.S., the Safe Third Country Agreement was revised and Roxham Road was closed in 2023. The changes tightened the rules, but allowed someone entering Canada illegally from the U.S. and remaining undiscovered for 14 days to file a refugee claim in Canada. Those arriving from the U.S. at airports and regular border crossings are usually turned back.

The lawyers cautioned that unless Ottawa changes the policy quickly, record numbers of people facing deportation by Mr. Trump would try to make it to Canada, where they could qualify for a work permit and health care while waiting for their claim to be processed.

Winnipeg refugee and immigration lawyer David Matas urged the government to speak to the Biden administration now, before Mr. Trump takes office in January, about changing the agreement. He said the 14-day provision is “an incentive to traffickers to get round the system.”…

Source: Immigration minister says ‘not everyone is welcome’ in response to concerns about Trump deportation plan

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Trump is stacking his White House with immigration hawks

2024/11/13 Leave a comment

Will be a bumpy ride and the direction is clear. As the economic and human toll becomes clearer, there may be some pushback:

President-elect Donald Trump is set to install immigration hawks for two major White House roles, key positions that don’t require Senate confirmation and will enable them to enact his sweeping immigration agenda across the federal government.

Tom Homan, his pick for “border czar,” and Stephen Miller, his deputy White House chief of staff for policy, won’t formally helm any arms of government, but they are likely to carry enormous sway with cabinet secretaries and agency directors. They are expected to be viewed as the president’s direct emissaries, empowered to push for specific actions and track progress implementing Trump’s agenda.

But beyond DHS, they will likely take interest in the Department of Health and Human Services — which plays a role in handling refugee resettlement and unaccompanied migrant children — and the Labor Department, which issues key certifications for certain employment-based visa programs.

The State Department, which issues visas, will also be a focus, as will the Justice Department, which runs the immigration courts.

The expected installation of Homan and Miller signals Trump intends to deliver on his promise of mass deportations. The Trump transition didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Homan formerly headed the DHS division responsible for arresting, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants. He spent much of his career working on immigration enforcement, holding leadership roles at Immigration and Customs Enforcement during both the Obama and Trump administrations.

And Miller has spent more than a decade in Washington working to reduce legal immigration to the United States and increase deportations. He was one of the earliest supporters of Trump’s 2016 presidential bid and has remained closely allied with the president through the tumultuous years since.

“Trump is clearly being far more deliberate about how he’s making his appointments and spending his time working with people he knows and trusts,” said Daniel Stein, the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for increased restrictions on immigration.

Source: Trump is stacking his White House with immigration hawks

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Keller: What will be the economic consequences of Donald Trump?

2024/11/11 Leave a comment

Good series of questions:

..The challenge for Canada is that if the Trump administration decides on an aggressive policy of alien removal, or if non-citizens in the U.S. fear that such a policy is coming, many of them may choose to simply walk across the border into Canada. It could be a repeat of Roxham Road, on a potentially far larger scale.

Since 2023, Canada has an expanded Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S., under which a foreigner in the U.S. who comes to Canada to make an asylum claim is supposed to be quickly returned to the U.S. But if hundreds of thousands of people that the Trump administration wants to deport decide to self-deport themselves to Canada, will the Trump administration follow the letter of the agreement and take them back?

The MAGA movement gets a lot of mileage out of “owning the Libs,” and Mr. Trump could make great sport out this situation. He could say that, while the Biden administration was marked by scenes of migrants flooding across the southern border on the nightly news, the Trump administration is delivering the opposite, namely scenes of illegal immigrants flooding out of the U.S. and across the northern border. Could a border crisis for Canada be played as a deportation triumph for Mr. Trump?

It might be a variation on Republican border-state governors busing migrants to Democratic strongholds such as New York – a move that not only owned the libs but upended U.S. politics, spurring some blue state voters to become more conservative and helping elect Mr. Trump.

Canada’s refugee-claims system is already massively overloaded and backlogged, as is the system for removing failed claimants. Anyone making a refugee claim can expect to live in Canada for many years pending a decision, and possibly many more years, even indefinitely, after that.

To avoid an influx of people from the U.S., Canada is counting on a couple of conditions that may not hold for much longer. First, that if someone comes from the U.S. to make a refugee claim, we can send them back. And second, that there aren’t very many people in the U.S. who would want to bypass the refugee process, sneak into Canada and become an illegal immigrant – even though it’s relatively easy to walk into Canada at thousands of quiet spots from coast to coast.

What does Mr. Trump have in store for us? We are about to find out.

Source: What will be the economic consequences of Donald Trump?

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Dade: Start reading policy papers from U.S. right-wing think tanks, Canada

2024/11/08 Leave a comment

Sound advice. Explore other bubbles, not just the comfortable ones. Important to understand the ideas and arguments :

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s win in Tuesday’s U.S. election is poised to bring larger economic harm to Canada than anything the country has seen in the modern area of its engagement with the United States.

To defend against the coming challenges, there are two key points for Canada to be able to anticipate, understand and survive a second Trump administration.

The first is that as a second administration, as opposed to the first, Mr. Trump and those who will populate his cabinet will not be surprised to be in power this time – they will be prepared.

The second point, related to the first, is to follow the paper and people. Instead of the tweets issued in a void of serious policy work, this time there is “substance” – for lack of a better term – to help determine which of his tweets and seemingly random announcements aren’t that random.

With this Trump administration, there are MAGA-affiliated think tanks and individuals, many of whom will likely be in the administration, who have been doing the research and policy formation to implement a Make America Great Again agenda, or their particular variant of it….

Source: Start reading policy papers from U.S. right-wing think tanks, Canada

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Semotiuk: Deporting 11 Million U.S. Undocumented Immigrants: Mission Impossible

2024/07/23 Leave a comment

Indeed:

Recently, America’s Voice, a pro-immigration NGO, spoke up about the ramifications of former President Donald Trump’s plan to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. “It means detention camps full of immigrants waiting to be removed. This would affect all undocumented people living in the US, even those who have lived here for decades.” It added, “The moral cost to the country would be unimaginable. It would also lead to economic disaster. The cost to deport 11 million people would come to more than $265 billion. The deportation of every 1 million immigrants would cause an estimated 88,000 American job losses. We would lose trillions in immigrant taxes, economic contributions, and payments into Social Security and Medicare.”

Legally Speaking

Legally speaking, the complications of such an endeavour have been summarized as follows: “Even undocumented immigrants in America have certain constitutional rights, particularly those who have been here for longer periods of time. For example, longer-term noncitizens are entitled to the right to counsel, albeit at their own expense. They are also protected by at least the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process. These immigrants also have other legal protections.

These constitutional rights mean that removing illegal immigrants from America would require legal hearings in courtrooms. In addition to considering the rights of the defendants, this would create a logistical nightmare, tying up the courts from dealing with other substantive issues. Judges, prosecutors, defence counsel as well as the persons concerned would all have to coordinate their calendars to schedule mutually agreeable dates for hearings before illegal immigrants could be deported. If you multiply this by some millions of cases, you have a better idea of why legally removing these immigrants from America is going to take a long time and will be very expensive.” What is more, trying to do it without respecting these legal rights essentially involves converting America into a dictatorship and is, therefore, unacceptable.

Other Consequences

But one other consequence of all this has not been considered: its impossibility and the likely destabilization of other states if it were done.

At least 15 countries that will not accept the return of their nationals due to deportation. These include China, India, and Russia, for example. Indeed, it can be anticipated that as many as 150 countries will refuse the return of large numbers of their nationals from the U.S. Trump’s threats to cut American aid to them may work on some, but few, and certainly not on most. Thus, the proposal becomes impossible to implement.

Case In Point: Mexico

Special problems arise in the case of Mexico. Over four millionundocumented Mexicans live in the United States. When added to the problem of the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking to enter the U.S. through Mexico, the addition of four million returning Mexicans would be overwhelming for the country. There is no guarantee of cooperation in this venture.

What About Canada?

In the case of Canada, the commencement of deportation measures in the U.S. against 11 million people would likely drive many undocumented immigrants northward, legally or illegally. Each year, Canada’s current immigration levels come in at about 500,000. In past years, irregular crossings from the U.S. to Canada of about 100,000 migrants at Roxham Road were a major burden for Canadian authorities. It is not hard to imagine the dislocations in Canada that could be caused if, say, even one million noncitizens of the U.S. decided to make their way northward to avoid U.S. deportations back to their homelands.

Conclusion

In short, deporting 11 million noncitizen migrants from the United States is a mission impossible. But instead of deportations, there is another more reasonable way of dealing with this problem. It would be to allow those undocumented immigrants who have been here for many years to stay by moving the registry date forward but to require them to do some community service to atone for their undocumented entry. Let reasonable minds prevail and avoid the disaster former President Trump has in mind for America.

Source: Deporting 11 Million U.S. Undocumented Immigrants: Mission Impossible

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What Would It Take to Deport Millions of Immigrants? The G.O.P. Plan, Explained

2024/07/19 Leave a comment

Good long read on the practicalities and virtual impossibilities of doing so. Any such efforts would of course be divisive, disruptive, costly and likely only partially successful (like the partially completed wall in his presidency):

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he vowed to build a wall to seal the border and keep criminals from entering the country. This campaign season, his immigration agenda has a new focus: a mass deportation program unlike anything the country has seen.

His party’s platform, ratified at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, promises the “largest deportation effort in American history,” and immigration was the theme of Tuesday’s gathering.

What would it take to deport millions of people? Is it even possible?

There were 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States in 2022, according to the latest government estimates, and more than eight out of 10 have been in the country for more than a decade. Mr. Trump said during the debate last month that there were 18 million, which is unsubstantiated.

Fleeing political and economic turmoil, migrants from countries like Venezuela have crossed the border in record numbers during the Biden administration.

Mr. Trump and the Republican platform have made broad declarations but thus far offered scant details about their intended operation.

The former president has suggested that any undocumented immigrant is subject to removal.

The party platform states that “the most dangerous criminals” would be prioritized.

It also said: “The Republican Party is committed to sending illegal aliens back home and removing those who have violated our laws.”

The consensus among immigration experts and former homeland security officials is that logistical, legal, bureaucratic and cost barriers would make it virtually impossible to carry out the mass deportations Mr. Trump seeks in the span of a four-year presidential term.

“It’s enormously complicated and an expensive thing to decide to deport people who have been here years,” said Laura Collins, an immigration expert at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.

Currently, ICE agents focus on locating and deporting convicted criminals, such as child molesters and others suspected of being a threat to public or national security.

Some one million immigrants with final removal orders living in the country could be a targeted group.

“Let’s say you find these people. You then have to detain them,” said Mr. Neifach. “How are you going to expand detention in a way that won’t blow the bank?”

Every potential deportee is held in a detention facility, and in the current fiscal year, Congress funded the detention of 41,500 immigrants daily at a cost of $3.4 billion, which would need to increase exponentially.

And many immigrants hail from countries that do not have diplomatic ties with the United States or that refuse to take back their nationals. They cannot be immediately flown out of the country, and the Supreme Court has ruled that people cannot remain detained for limitless periods awaiting removal.

The ICE budget for transportation and deportation in fiscal 2023 was $420 million, and the agency deported 142,580 people that year.

Another Trump administration could speed up deportations by terminating programs that the Biden administration has introduced.

For example, since 2022, some 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have been allowed to fly to the United States and live and work for two years, provided they have a financial sponsor. Mr. Biden has also allowed nearly 700,000 migrants who make an appointment on a mobile app to cross the border through an official port of entry and receive work permits.

“Trump could flick the switch and revoke it,” said Mr. Neifach. But, he added, many of the migrants could make asylum claims and become part of the clogged courts.

Expedited removal at the border enables the swift deportation of migrants without a hearing, unless they convince an agent that they would face the threat of violence back home, and Mr. Biden in June issued an executive order currently being challenged in court to amplify use of this tool.

Mr. Trump could try to extend it to the interior, though he would likely face court challenges.

Mr. Trump has not addressed whether he would exercise any discretion, or make any exceptions.

More than one million Americans are married to an undocumented person, and a large share of undocumented immigrants have children who are U.S. citizens.

“When you are talking those kinds of numbers and law enforcement presence, you have to think at the end — what does that do to the atmosphere in the country?” said Ms. Napolitano, the former Homeland Security secretary.

Source: What Would It Take to Deport Millions of Immigrants? The G.O.P. Plan, Explained

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Rudyard Griffiths: The curse of events and what a second Trump presidency means for Canada 

2024/07/18 Leave a comment

More speculation on what a Trump administration implementation of mass deportation could mean for Canada. The Northern border was already an issue and may have facilitated expanding the STCA to the entire border:

…The security argument could also help in the context of managing the chaos that is likely to occur at our shared border in the instance of mass U.S. deportations of migrants. As amply demonstrated in recent years, we lack the state capacity to effectively police our own border and will need American assistance in the face of a migration crisis. Having a secure northern as well as southern border is a core, high-conviction policy of Trump’s MAGA movement and one we can and should help with…

Source: Rudyard Griffiths: The curse of events and what a second Trump presidency means for Canada

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New Clues On What Immigration Will Look Like In A Second Trump Term

2022/08/04 Leave a comment

Hopefully just a theoretical exercise:

What would it mean for U.S. immigration policy if, on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump was sworn in as president of the United States? Many people expect a crackdown on illegal immigration. However, recent clues and past actions indicate the more significant impact of a second Trump presidency would be on legal immigration, including the admission of refugees, family immigrants and high-skilled professionals.

Personnel Is Policy: “Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his ‘America First’ ideology . . . The heart of the plan is derived from an executive order known as “Schedule F,” according to Axios. The publication also reported American Moment, a pro-Trump group, wants to replace current federal workers with “applicants who want to cut not just illegal but also legal immigration into the U.S.”

It is easy to see how this would result in more restrictive immigration policies. After White House adviser Stephen Miller received pushback the first year he reduced the annual refugee cap, at least one career government employee was reassigned so the individual could not interfere in the future, according to Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear.

With the power to hire and fire civil servants, Trump officials could fill the federal government with anti-immigrant personnel. If immigrants, businesses and attorneys complain now about U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), they should consider what agency processing would look like after an anti-immigrant litmus test is imposed on USCIS employees during a Trump-Miller second term.

Trump Likely To Fail Again To Reduce Illegal Immigration: In a second term, in the name of combating illegal immigration, Trump administration officials would attempt to enact nearly every restrictive immigration measure considered in recent years. This would include eliminating the practical ability to apply for asylum after crossing the southern border, building more of “the wall,” increasing the use of expedited removal and other policies.

Given that Donald Trump failed to reduce illegal immigration the first time around, there is no reason to believe similar policies would succeed if tried again. During the Trump administration, between FY 2016 and FY 2019, apprehensions at the Southwest border (a proxy for illegal entry) increasedfrom 408,870 to 851,508—a rise of more than 100 percent. While the Covid-19 pandemic caused apprehensions to decline for several months starting in March 2020, by August and September 2020, apprehensions had resumed at the approximate level of illegal entry seen during the same months in FY 2019. In short, Donald Trump’s policies failed to reduce illegal immigration and were enacted at a great human cost, particularly for parents and children separated at the border.

The Biden administration, in large measure, continued Trump’s border policies, namely Title 42, which allows individuals to be expelled without further processing. Title 42 is supposed to be a public health measure but has been used to prevent many people from applying for asylum. The policies have boosted Border Patrol apprehensions and encouraged people to enter unlawfully, often multiple times, likely making the border more problematic. A federal judge has ordered the Biden administration to keep Title 42 in place.

Department of Homeland Security reports show over the years tighter enforcement has significantly increased the number of immigrants who use human smugglers to cross the border (i.e., virtually everyone crossing now employs smugglers). The policies have also resulted in an increased loss of life. In July 2022, 53 immigrants suffocated inside a tractor-trailer in San Antonio.

Opposition To Legal Immigration: Ironically, the Trump administration is likely to try every measure to combat illegal entry but the one proven effective in reducing illegal entry: Making it easier to enter and work legally in the United States.

Research from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) found that a significant increase in the lawful admission of farm workers during the 1950s under the Bracero Program dramatically reduced illegal entry to America. Based on apprehensions at the border, unlawful entry across the southwest border declined by 95% between 1953 and 1959, as farm workers entered legally in greater numbers.

Trump Immigration Policies Will Likely Decimate Long-Term U.S. Economic Growth: Labor force growth is a crucial part of economic growth, without which Americans grow poorer or see their standard of living stagnate.

Those who argued that Donald Trump was only concerned about limiting illegal immigration have a problem—it’s not true. Unlike any president before him, Trump made broad use of executive authority under section 212(f) to restrict legal immigration and suspend the entry of many categories of immigrants and temporary visa holders. In 2020, this prevented the entry of workers and professionals on temporary visas, and immigrants on family, employment-based and Diversity visas. He also set the lowest refugee admissions ceiling of any president.

Given another term, expect refugee admissions to be extremely low and for Trump to use section 212(f) to bypass Congress and block the entry of many immigrants and visa holders. The ban on immigration from a number of majority Muslim countries could return.

The impact of Trump’s policies would be devastating to the nation’s future economic growth. A National Foundation for American Policy analysis concluded if Trump’s policies had continued, legal immigration would have been reduced in half, and “average annual labor force growth would be approximately 59% lower than compared to a policy of no immigration reductions.”

In 2021 and 2022, America saw the negative results of Trump’s immigration policies, with an estimated 2 million immigrant workers missing from the U.S. labor force blamed for reducing U.S. economic output and contributing to inflation. Another four years of similar policies would likely produce more negative results, potentially longer term, if enacted by legislation.

Trump Likely To Push More International Students And High-Skilled Professionals Away From The U.S.:During the Trump administration, many international students diverted away from the United States, primarily to Canada, and employers saw denial rates for H-1B petitions skyrocket. Expect America to lose talent in even more significant numbers should the entire Trump immigration agenda against highly educated foreign nationals come to fruition.

Businesses and universities should expect every idea or regulation the Trump administration failed to implement to be tried again. That would mean:

– New limits on who qualifies for an H-1B petition and how (and where) an H-1B visa holder can work;

– Requiring employers to pay well above-market wages for H-1B visa holders and employees sponsored for permanent residence;

– New restrictions on international students and Optional Practical Training (OPT), and other policies.

There is no evidence such policies would help U.S. workers or American students—the evidence shows the opposite would be true. The harm to the U.S. economy and future innovation would be real.

Between 2017 and 2020, attorneys representing businesses, universities and immigrant rights organizations successfully blocked several Trump policies. That task would become much more difficult the second time around since former Trump officials would have learned from their mistakes and have a fresh four years to implement restrictive immigration policies.

What Would A Different Republican President Do? A different Republican president, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, would likely adopt many of Trump’s policies on illegal immigration. However, DeSantis (or another Republican) might not allow Stephen Miller back in the White House. Without Miller, a different Republican president could adopt policies on legal immigration more consistent with the views of mainstream economists, particularly given the potential for Republican inroads with Asian and Latino voters.

New Limits On The Freedom Of Americans: Trump’s most significant policies will restrict legal immigration, which, economists note, will harm innovation and reduce economic growth in America. But the impact will be broader.

“An immigration restriction is a government ban on a wide variety of economic activities by natives,” according toeconomist Michael Clemens. By that standard, a second Trump term would mean less freedom for consumers who wish to enjoy products and services offered by immigrants, Americans who hope to sponsor family members and employers who want to hire foreign-born scientists and engineers to compete in the global economy.

Source: New Clues On What Immigration Will Look Like In A Second Trump Term

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New evidence disputes Trump administration’s citizenship question rationale

2022/07/22 Leave a comment

No suprise:

Previously unreleased internal communications indicate the Trump administration tried to add a citizenship question to the census with the goal of affecting congressional apportionment, according to a report issued Wednesday by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

The documents appear to contradict statements made under oath by then-Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, who told the committee that the push for a citizenship question was unrelated to apportionment and the reason for adding it was to help enforce the Voting Rights Act.

The nearly 500 documents include several drafts of an August 2017 memorandum prepared by a Commerce Department lawyer and political appointee, James Uthmeier, in which he initially warned that using a citizenship question for apportionment would probably be illegal and violate the constitution, the report said.

Source: New evidence disputes Trump administration’s citizenship question rationale

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