Biden administration releases first-ever report on diversity in federal government 

2023/03/06 Leave a comment

Of note, embryonic to Canada’s tracking diversity for close to 30 years. USA data is hampered by the limited groups captured in the USA census.

Canadian numbers for comparison purposes (core public administration) are in the table below:

2021 Census2021 EE ReportPopulation BenchmarkCitizenship Benchmark
GroupPopulationCitizensAllEXGap AllGap EXGap AllGap EX
Total VisMin population26.5%19.6%18.9%12.4%-7.6%-14.2%-0.7%-7.2%
South Asian7.1%4.9%3.3%2.8%-3.7%-4.3%-1.5%-2.1%
Chinese4.7%3.6%3.2%1.5%-1.6%-3.2%-0.4%-2.1%
Black4.3%3.3%3.8%1.9%-0.4%-2.4%0.6%-1.4%
Filipino2.6%1.9%0.7%0.2%-1.9%-2.4%-1.2%-1.7%
Latin American1.6%1.1%0.8%0.4%-0.8%-1.2%-0.3%-0.7%
Arab/West Asian2.9%2.0%2.1%1.9%-0.8%-1.0%0.2%-0.0%
Southeast Asian1.1%0.9%0.8%0.5%-0.3%-0.6%-0.1%-0.4%
Korean0.6%0.4%0.3%0.2%-0.3%-0.4%-0.1%-0.2%
Japanese0.3%0.2%0.1%0.1%-0.2%-0.2%-0.1%-0.1%
Visible minority, n.i.e.0.5%0.4%2.1%1.3%1.6%0.8%1.1%0.9%
Multiple visible minorities0.9%0.8%1.5%1.7%0.6%0.8%0.7%0.9%
Not a visible minority73.5%71.7%75.9%83.2%2.4%9.8%4.2%11.5%
Arab and West Asian2.9%2.0%-2.0%
    Arab1.9%1.4%-1.4%
    West Asian1.0%0.6%-0.6%

The Biden administration has a new warning for private employers: “We are going to start being a competitor of yours,” said Dr. Janice Underwood, director of the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) at the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM), in an interview with The 19th. 

The federal government will fight to attract top talent to its workforce. To that goal, OPM, which serves as the human resources arm of the federal government, has released its first-ever report on diversity across the federal workforce. The 31-page document breaks down hiring and retention across agencies and gives a snapshot of the administration’s efforts to remove barriers for applicants from underrepresented communities. It’s an area where the federal government has historically struggled, Underwood concedes. 

In June 2021, Biden issued an executive order directing OPM and other federal agencies to draft a strategic plan for prioritizing diversity in hiring and retention. The February 15 report is a result of that order and offers some of the first simple, publicly accessible demographic data on the federal workforce, with breakdowns by race, gender and disability. 

The numbers reflect a federal government that made marginal gains toward racial diversity between 2017 and 2021. Black employees accounted for 18.15 percent of the federal workforce in 2017 and 18.19 percent in 2021, while the percentage of Latinx employees jumped from 8.75 percent to 9.95 percent. Asian workers went from 5.99 to 6.49 percent, and Native American and Alaskan Native workers dipped in representation from 1.69 percent in 2017 to 1.62 in 2021. Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders made up 0.51 percent of workers in 2017 and 0.59 percent in 2021. 

Women made up 43.38 percent of the workforce in 2017, a number that grew to 44.44 percent in 2021. Nonbinary workers are largely excluded from the tracking, an area that the report and Underwood note will change with future reporting. 

“Having this gender binary doesn’t go far enough [and] is not inclusive for our workforce,” Underwood told The 19th. “So OPM and the office of DEIA in particular are really taking the lead and reimagining what that could look like, everything from what it looks like on forms to what it looks like when you apply for jobs.”

Underwood said the government can’t change what it doesn’t measure. Officials add that the tracking effort, in general, is critical to serving an increasingly diverse public and also competing for the top minds in hiring.

“In order to recruit and sustain the best talent, we must ensure every service-minded individual feels welcome and supported in contributing their talents to the Federal workforce,” said OPM Director Kiran Ahuja in a statement. 

The first-ever report reflects a government in the midst of cultural change. Last September, OPM launched a council of chief diversity officers across federal agencies. The group has been tasked with setting government goals and benchmarks and identifying obstacles that might keep some groups from applying for jobs. 

Among the first changes has been to the federal government’s practices for hiring interns, positions that have historically been unpaid. 

“Everybody can’t afford to move to Washington, D.C., for an unpaid internship, and we have amazing talent all over this nation that does not have proximity to Washington, D.C.,” Underwood said. “I’m really excited about the launch of the paid internship guidance that all of our federal agencies have received.”

While the report does not track employees’ LGBTQ+ status, it does emphasize the expansion of LGBTQ+-friendly practices, including increased use of pronouns throughout government to affirm trans and nonbinary colleagues, as well as reiterating that all contracted insurance carriers cover gender-affirming care. 

It also offers data on disability hiring for the first time. Efforts to increase disability employment in the federal government are long-standing. Since the passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the federal government has been obligated to hire people with disabilities, although the law did not set any particular numbers or benchmarks. 

In 2010, President Barack Obama issued an executive order stating that the federal government, as the nation’s largest employer, must “become a model for the employment of individuals with disabilities.” The order directed federal agencies to improve efforts to recruit, hire and retain workers with disabilities, with the goal of hiring 100,000 more people with disabilities into the federal government over five years. 

According to a 2015 report from the OPM, the government slightly exceeded that goal, at 109,575 new hires. However, the federal government has struggled with retention. People with disabilities working for the government are three times more likely than their non-disabled colleagues to quit. 

In January 2017, before President Donald Trump was sworn in, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released a rule to amend regulations related to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that set a goal for 12 percent representation of people with disabilities among the federal workforce. At that time, 11.1 percent of federal employees identified as disabled. 

According to the latest report from OPM, 16.6 percent of federal employees identify as having a disability, surpassing the benchmark set under the Trump administration. The report did not include information on disability representation in leadership.

Biden’s executive order requiring a government-wide strategic plan brought disability employment under the same umbrella as other diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts. 

The report is expected to have broad implications because the federal government often sets a standard for the private sector in business practices. 

“We endeavor to be the model employer for the nation,” Underwood said. “But we have a lot to learn as well.” 

Source: Biden administration releases first-ever report on diversity in federal government

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USA: Black farmers worry new approach on “race neutral” lending leaves them in the shadows

2023/02/28 Leave a comment

Interesting discussion from both the substantive perspective (righting historical discrimination) and the politics that broadened eligibility and arguably entrenched discrimination:

Farmers of color across the country, who’d been promised debt cancelation as part of a special program to address racial disparity in lending, rejoiced when they received letters in 2021 in the mail that said their loans with the Agriculture Department would be canceled.

And then, for over a year, there was nothing.

Multiple lawsuits led by white farmers, who said the program discriminated against them for being white, stymied the race-targeted program.

The debt forgiveness was a congressional effort to help USDA make up for a history of discrimination. For decades, farmers of color have filed individual lawsuits, class action lawsuits and congressional testimony against the department. And for decades, rulings and reports have repeatedly concluded that USDA’s lending practices have been discriminatory.

Now, USDA is in the process of rolling out a second, newer, program passed by Congress as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But the $3.1 billion now appropriated as payments toward loans don’t just go to racial and ethnic minorities. They also go to some white farmers under a new category: “economically distressed.”

Economically distressed means farmers of any race who are behind on loan payments or on the brink of foreclosure.

And since this new program is now race-neutral, those who are particularly concerned about the disparate impact of lending practices on Black and other farmers of color say the move could hide the scope of the problem and lead to further disenfranchisement.

Farmers of color wonder if relief is being received as intended

In October, USDA began making automatic payments to the accounts of farmers who were 60 days or more delinquent. In some cases, payments were made without notifying the borrower: a pleasant surprise in some cases and procedural confusion in others.

However, advocates and producers complain there is a lack of clarity and transparency about who is getting the money.

“You lose a lot of the trust when there was very little trust in the beginning,” said Brandon Smith, a cattle rancher in Texas who received a payment and is an outreach coordinator for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund. “No one’s trying to be ungrateful, but it’s just the trust and what was promised to them.”

As of Jan. 30, the USDA paid out more than $823 million for the Inflation Reduction Act program to farmers who were either delinquent on payments or on the verge of foreclosure.

“The steps we’ve taken so far are really for lack of a better analogy, to stop the bleeding,” said Zach Ducheneaux, administrator of the Farm Service Agency, the lending arm of the department.

He said the next step is to deal with 15,600 “complex cases,” including borrowers on the brink of foreclosure and those near delinquency.

“As far as I know, we haven’t had any foreclosures in our guaranteed loans since we started providing this assistance. That’s an ongoing process to clean up those complex cases,” Ducheneaux said. “And, of course, having a bankruptcy judge and other creditors make those even more complex.”

This case-by-case funding will include some $500 million in payments.

USDA has not outlined what it will do with the remaining over $1 billion allocated by Congress.

States with “Economically distressed borrowers” net high dollars

Data obtained by NPR show that Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Puerto Rico are receiving the largest amounts of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act towards economically distressed borrowers.

Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas also happen to be the largest states for FSA lending for what USDA labels “socially disadvantaged” producers – which are people of color and white women. Oklahoma leads the way in lending to those types of borrowers.

These were also the states that were expected to benefit the most from the original race-targeted program.

It is unclear, however, how many of these “socially disadvantaged” borrowers are people of color.

In the state of Oklahoma, out of 129,619 total producers in Oklahoma, 9.2% are American Indian/Alaska Native and 1.4% are Black or African American, and .4% Asian compared to 84.9% white, according to the self-reported 2017 Agriculture Census.

Puerto Rico, which has not recovered from the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017, also has a large percentage of socially disadvantaged borrowers.

It has a farming population of 8,230 of which 7% identify as Black, 90% identify as white, .8% as other and 1% as more than one race, according to the self-reported 2017 Census of Agriculture. About 99%, regardless of race, identify as Hispanic or Latino ethnic origin, making them socially disadvantaged.

“Economically, they are (also) disadvantaged. That’s not surprising to me,” said Iris Jannett Rodriguez, president of the coffee sector of the Puerto Rican Farm Bureau. “Many farms might have a lot of land but the land that is producing crops is really small.”

Almost any way you slice the numbers: looking at raw totals of borrowers and dollars, or average payments per borrower or loan, Puerto Rico – which is not among the nation’s top agriculture producers – consistently lands among the top recipients. With 820 direct loan borrowers receiving $72.3 million and two guaranteed loan borrowers receiving $1.3 million in payments, Puerto Rico ranks fourth in the nation for highest borrowers and IRA payments.

“Both Oklahoma and Puerto Rico have a large share of farm loans. Therefore, it is not surprising that they also have more distressed borrowers relative to other states,” said Marissa Perry, press secretary for USDA regarding the rates of payments made toward both states. “In the case of Puerto Rico, in recent years, a number of natural disasters have contributed to delinquencies.”

But advocates say they fear the money may now not be reaching all of the producers who benefited from the first program.

USDA officials say that since Congress did not make race a consideration for payments, it does not track that data. Nonetheless, some patterns stick out because some of the states with the highest number of USDA loan borrowers who are socially disadvantaged are getting the most of the IRA payments.

As a part of the American Rescue Plan, the early 2020 pandemic relief bill, lawmakers approved $5 billion toward debt relief and cancellation for minority farmers. The legislation was specifically targeting what was labeled “socially disadvantaged” farmers, or African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Pacific Islanders.

But the program was swiftly blocked by about 12 lawsuits, including one out of Texas led by former President Donald Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller and current state Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. They argued the program was discriminating against white farmers for being white.

Lawmakers then repealed the program and passed a second one through the Inflation Reduction Act.

“The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was absolutely a tough pill to swallow with regard to the overturning of American Rescue Plan [program],” said Dãnia Davy, director of Land Retention and Advocacy at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, however adding that some results have benefited her membership. “I have to say that a lot of our farmers ultimately have been very positive as they’ve received benefits under the Inflation Reduction Act that some folks didn’t even anticipate receiving. So it’s actually been a surprisingly positive response.”

The first program was specifically supposed to provide redress to farmers of color, many of who had been a part of class action lawsuits against USDA. Plaintiffs under Pigford v. Glickman, the lawsuit brought by Black farmers settled in 1999. However, tens of thousands missed out due to confusing paperwork and filing deadlines and near attorney malpractice, advocates say.

In 2010, Congress appropriated an additional $1.2 billion in a second round of payouts. But still, many did not receive them due to more denials of claims and deadline and processing issues. Plaintiffs fell even further behind on payments and legal fees — hurting their credit and bottom line for decades to follow.

“There are people who are still living from the first round of Pigford and they’ve never been made whole,” Davy said. “And a lot of times when people talk about Pigford, they think that Pigford addressed all of the racial discrimination that Black farmers faced, but it was really for a finite period of time.”

Smith says producers are happy about payments but upset there isn’t full loan forgiveness and confused about the rollout.

“They feel robbed about that part,” Smith said. “The law was passed almost six months ago and it seems like they [USDA] are a little sluggish.”

Much of the money remains to be doled out.

Smith said farmers who received notice in 2021 that their debt would be forgiven sat in limbo for a year, leading to many of them feeling like the department slow-walked the rollout of the original program, giving time for lawsuits to stall it.

“They were promised something by the government and then put on hold for over a year and a half,” Smith said. “They were told money was allocated to them during the pandemic. They were not able to use those funds. Now the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, they added more money to that pool but they aren’t doing debt forgiveness. They just had a couple of payments.”

In response to the concerns, USDA said they worked quickly to dole out the funds to farmers most at risk of losing their farms. The department is now in a more complicated phase, it said.

“This work requires diligence and time to make sure we are doing right by producers and fundamentally changing our approach to be better and in a long-lasting way,” said Dewayne Goldmon, senior advisor for racial equity to the Secretary of Agriculture. “I’m in this job to advance racial justice and opportunity – and we will keep mending and improving our approach at USDA to ensure Black farmers and any other farmers who have been left behind in the past are no longer left behind.”

Black farmers’ concerns over equity remain

Still, some farmers of color argue that they have still not benefited from a program originally designed to help them.

Eddie Lewis, a farmer in Louisiana, said he falls into that “complex case” category — he is delinquent $600,000. While he was poised to receive cancellation under the first program, the delay to get any payment under the new program is affecting his ability to get the capital he needs, he said.

“I would be the perfect candidate for a case-by-case basis. I’m a good farmer. I got good yields, I got good character. I got good credit,” he said. Lewis is in limbo, unable to secure other loans he needs because of the outstanding delinquency.

Advocates are also concerned that Black farmers who led the movement to get a debt-relief program will be left out of it.

In June 2022, Rep. Alma Adams, a North Carolina Democratic member of the House Agriculture Committee, sent a letter to USDA asking them to use money appropriated in another section of the COVID-19 relief package, also aimed at tackling inequity, to cover the costs of debt to Black farmers while litigation on the debt relief program continued.

Adams argued that according to USDA data, only 3,100 Black farmers would be eligible for the relief totaling less than $300 million. The most recent FSA report released in September shows the cost of 5,970 loans taken out by “socially disadvantaged farmers,” including white women, was $1.2 billion.

Advocates say the amount needed to cover the debt of farmers of color, and especially Black farmers, is so small that the funding should be appropriated — especially out of a multibillion-dollar program.

“Unfortunately, our folks have been so shortchanged that I think the numbers will probably bear out that there’s still a significant number of white farmers who not only benefited from the subsidies and the COVID benefits but now even IRA,” Davy said. “I think that program can’t truly be called a success for civil rights because you have to really intentionally address racial discrimination if you want to call it a success for civil rights.”

However, other farmers argue that the new, race-neutral program may be better at providing aid to those immediately struggling without triggering lawsuits. And many of them happen to be farmers of color.

In defense of the original race-targeted program, the government argued in court that white farmers were far less likely to be delinquent on their loans. The ratio of white borrowers who are delinquent on FSA loans in 2021 was 11%, compared to 38% of Black borrowers, 15% of Asian borrowers, 17% of American Indian and Alaskan Natives, and 68% of Hispanic borrowers.

Rod Simmons, a farmer in North Carolina, at first struggled with the department. He cited familiar problems, like a confusing application process and deadlines, as barriers he faced getting involved with the department’s programs.

When the pandemic hit, he lost 22% of his inventory. He was on the verge of liquidating his assets in order to get money to make the loan payments And then the Inflation Reduction Act loan payment came through, it amounted to two years worth of money he owed.

“My granddad had never seen any type of program in his time that made an impact for farmers like this one did,” Simmons said. “Now, the programs can be designed in a manner that will cater to those that need it versus those that want it. And there’s a big difference.”

Source: Black farmers worry new approach on “race neutral” lending leaves them in the shadows

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U.S. delivers reality check: New border deal with Canada not top priority

2023/02/27 Leave a comment

More coverage, deeper than most:

The premier of Quebec wants a new migration deal with the U.S. He wants it urgently. He wants the prime minister of Canada to negotiate it. The prime minister? He wants it too.

It’s become a pressing political priority and major federal-provincial irritant, with Canada eager to slow the flow of migrants entering on foot from the U.S. at unofficial points of entry, such as the contentious one at Roxham Road, south of Montreal.

There’s one small problem. The Americans get a say here.

For years, the U.S. has been conspicuously tight-lipped on the topic, and this week offered new — and rare — public insight into the American perspective.

Newsflash: A country dealing with millions of migrants per year is not in a major rush to reclaim Canada’s thousands.

U.S. Ambassador David Cohen told CBC News irregular crossings into Quebec are a symptom of a broad global migration challenge; and he’d rather address problems, not symptoms.

He wouldn’t even acknowledge the countries are talking about Canada’s desire to extend the 2002 Safe Third County Agreement to make it easier to expel migrants who cross between regular checkpoints.

Conversations with officials in both countries make clear no agreement is imminent. Whether President Joe Biden’s trip to Canada next month changes anything is an open question.

Two sources say that, to date, there have been constructive talks with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, but the issue is far from settled.

Here’s an assessment in blunter language from an immigration expert in Washington, who also happens to know Canada very well.

“There is zero incentive for the United States to reopen Safe Third Country right now. Zero,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior adviser on immigration at Washington’s Bipartisan Policy Centre, who once led Homeland Security operations at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.

‘Our house is burning right now’

In its current form, the Safe Third Country Agreement says asylum seekers who enter the U.S. or Canada must make their claims in the first country they arrive in, but it only covers official points of entry.

Canada wants the agreement extended across the entire frontier, so it applies to migrants who use irregular entry points like the now-famous Roxham Road.

To Canadians wondering why it’s taken years for the U.S. to prioritize these negotiations, Brown said: “Because our house is burning right now on the other border.… Sorry.”

Just look at two parallel events that unfolded this week, in Canada and the U.S. They might as well have been happening in parallel universes.

Quebec Premier François Legault got lots of attention back home for a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and an op-ed in the Globe and Mail.

He said Quebec received 39,000 irregular crossers last year, and could not handle more, saying it was straining housing, hospital services, and language training.

He requested money from Ottawa, said all future migrants should be sent to other provinces, and he demanded a new Safe Third Country deal with the U.S.

While the northern neighbour was asking the U.S. to accept more migrants, the Biden administration released plans to accept fewer, with a draft executive order.

The proposed rule would make it easier to instantly deport asylum claimants who try entering the U.S. without first scheduling an appointment in a mobile app, and first requesting asylum in Mexico.

That hardening attitude would come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to developments in the U.S.

Amid a historic worldwide surge in human displacement, migration has become perhaps the most explosive issue in American politics.

U.S. border agents could encounter more than three million migrants this year, higher even than the record-smashing total in 2022.

It’s causing strain in border communities like Yuma, Ariz., where agents met 300,000 migrants last year — that’s triple the local population.

Arizona official on northern complaints: ‘A joke to me’

The head of a regional hospital in Yuma said his staff have been caring for migrants and it’s cost the organization $20 million.

He said he laughs when he hears northern states complain about migration: Denver and New York, for example, have expressed a welcoming attitude then later declared they were overwhelmed.

“It’s pretty funny,”  said Dr. Bob Trenschel.

“They all seem to have a conniption when they get two buses of migrants.… The mayor of New York is squawking when he gets two busloads? That’s a joke to me.”

Now the mayor of New York is, in fact, paying for buses to carry migrants upstate, including to northern border communities where they enter Canada on foot.

After Canada averaged about 10,000 refugee claims per year since 2017, this northward surge has added tens of thousands of new border-crossers.

For comparison’s sake, the U.S. could expect more asylum claimants from Russia alone; if the recent rate holds, more than 60,000 Russians could seek asylum in the U.S. this year.

Other countries have even bigger challenges. Take Colombia: it’s currently home to nearly 10 per cent of the population of Venezuela, more than 2 million people who’ve fled.

An asylum-policy analyst in Washington said Canada’s migration issues don’t come up often in the policy conversation there.

“It’s certainly not something that is frequently raised,” said Susan Fratzke, a former State Department official and now senior analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

“When it does come up, it’s always in reference to knowing that it’s a Canadian priority.”

She said it’s possible there could be a deal, probably as part of a broader migration agreement and probably not soon.

Watching Biden visit for development

One American analyst of Canada-U.S. relations is more optimistic.

He said Biden has a demonstrated desire to maintain good relations with Canada, as evidenced by his resolving irritants around electric-vehicle incentives and the Nexus trusted-traveller program.

For that reason, said Chris Sands, he wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some sort of development next month when Biden visits Canada.

“It would be a wonderful announceable at an event like that,” said Sands, director of the Canada Institute at Washington’s WIlson Center. “This is eminently doable if there’s will on both sides.”

On Thursday, Trudeau said he has spoken directly to Biden about this and suggested it will be on the agenda of Biden’s upcoming Canadian visit.

One person familiar with the binational discussions said there’s a shared desire to get a deal, but working out the details is more complicated.

Sands concurred.

He said goodwill isn’t the issue. The problem, he said, is working through budgeting and logistics, like sorting out who handles what responsibilities among the handful of law-enforcement and border agencies in both countries.

Potential deal: Something bigger

So what would it take to get a deal?

To get Americans’ interest, Brown said Canada would probably have to offer something unrelated, or related tangentially.

Maybe something like a major Canadian stabilization role in Haiti, she said, or a clampdown on the flow of Mexicans through Canada into Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, which U.S. officials say is an emerging trend.

She suggested one surprising way the premier of Quebec might get Washington’s attention: accept more U.S. dairy imports, adding, “I’m only partially joking.”

The U.S. ambassador was clear in the CBC interview: his objective is a broader plan for international migration.

Canada has, in fact, signed a hemispheric agreement where it promised to take a lead role on some initiatives, one being resettling more French-speaking migrants, especially from Haiti.

Connecting the dots, Fratzke said any agreement on this issue will probably be bigger, not just a one-issue deal on Safe Third Country.

Two suggestions she offered: Canada could help build the capacity of other countries’ asylum systems, and could expand legal opportunities for economic migration.

The latter is what Brown wants for the U.S. too.

She said any solution must include opportunities for people to apply legally, so that they have hope the official pathways might work, for both humanitarian and economic visas.

The U.S., for example, is resettling only a few hundred refugees per year lately from Latin America: “That’s crazy,” Brown said.

And for all the millions of migrants it’s received, the percentage of people on U.S. soil born abroad is not actually that high, about average among industrialized countries.

She said the other part of a solution is more orderly enforcement. The asylum backlog is massive, and it takes an average of over four years to decide cases.

Brown said applications should be processed swiftly, decided near the border.

In the meantime, she said, when richer northern countries, like Canada, and the U.S., talk about restricting migration, they’re essentially pushing the burden south, to poorer countries, to places like Colombia, Central America and Mexico.

“That’s what we’re talking about,” she said.

Source: U.S. delivers reality check: New border deal with Canada not top priority

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USA: New study examines immigration demographics and deportations …

2023/02/22 Leave a comment

Interesting study across different administrations, showing limited variation:

No matter the U.S. political climate, young, single and less educated men seemed to be at higher risk for deportation than other undocumented Mexican immigrants from 2001-2019, an Emory University-led study published today in PNAS shows.

The article, “Deportations and Departures: Undocumented Mexican Immigrants’ Return Migration During Three Presidential Administrations,” was published February 20 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America journal (PNAS).

The study analyzes deportation and voluntary return migration data encompassing the administrations of U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump.

Lead author Emory assistant sociology professor Heeju Sohn teamed up with University of California Los Angeles colleagues Anne Pebley and Amanda Landrian Gonzalez, and Noreen Goldman of Princeton University to examine trends in socio-demographic characteristics of undocumented Mexican immigrants deported by the U.S. along with those who chose to return to Mexico.

Each administration had different policies toward undocumented immigrants. Bush had a pro-immigration view before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump promoted anti-immigrant rhetoric. Obama targeted deporting recent immigrants and those with criminal backgrounds.

While the study does not predict or offer any absolute probabilities, it provides insight into relative potential risks.

Sohn explained that “even through the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric advocated deporting all undocumented immigrants, particularly from Mexico, the characteristics of Mexican immigrants deported during the Trump years were not dramatically different from previous administrations.“

On average, each administration annually deported about 893,000 people with the majority of them Mexican citizens.

“Despite each administration’s differing approach and rhetoric, who was actually being deported or deciding to leave didn’t change all that much,” Sohn said. “Just because an undocumented person voluntary leaves the U.S. doesn’t always mean they felt they had a choice in that decision either.”

Fewer immigrants were deported annually during the Trump administration than under Obama or Bush who had the highest number of deportations. During Obama’s first term, there was an increase in deportation of Mexican immigrants with criminal convictions but that percentage decreased in the last two years of his presidency.

While Trump’s administration prioritized all undocumented immigrants for deportation, the result shows deportation focused more on young adults and those with less education, groups which already face higher deportation risks.

“Policy makers and the public need to understand the consequences of the immigration policies that are implemented — whether they work or not. While the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies had many negative effects on immigrants and Americans, they did not do what they were apparently intended to in terms of deporting a larger and more diverse group of undocumented immigrants,” says co-author Pebley, a UCLA professor and California Center for Population Research faculty fellow.

The Trump administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and heightened enforcement didn’t appear to motivate a more diverse group of undocumented immigrants to leave voluntarily. Rather, voluntary return migration to Mexico was a trend that began early in the Obama administration after the great recession of 2007-2009, according to the study.

“People who are leaving or being deported do not exist in a vacuum. You can’t isolate them separately from the social and family connections they have interwoven in U.S. society,” Sohn said. “So, what happens to undocumented people that society has neglected has a direct effect on the well-being of U.S. citizens. We have a duty to not discriminate and there is a need for additional research.”

The experiences of undocumented children living in the U.S. is a blind spot in national data; the youngest age group in this study is 18 to 31.

“Moving across countries is a disruptive life event. This is an age group where people take major steps as adults — finding a partner, having children or establishing a career. This can have reverberating consequences for the rest of their lives,” Sohn said.

For the study, Sohn and the other researchers combined deportees’ and voluntary returnees’ data from both sides of the border — the Migration Survey on the Borders of Mexico-North (EMIF-N) and U.S. Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).

It’s the first time these two major sets of data were combined for research purposes and studied in a novel way.

“It was critical that we understood the nuances of the data and sampling strategy. We took a lot of time and effort making sure our method accounted for the differences,” Sohn said.

“This is part of a bigger desire to make sure the lives of underrepresented groups have adequate representation. A lot of the research in social sciences are based on large data sets that don’t put much focus on the smaller groups or ones that are harder to measure,” Sohn said. “I hope getting this important topic published will get visibility to a wider audience.”

Source: New study examines immigration demographics and deportations …

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The U.S. isn’t rushing to deal with Canada’s Roxham Road migrant problem

2023/02/17 Leave a comment

Realpolitik, no incentive for USA and off-loading some of their “problems” makes meaningful and successful negotiations unlikely, although Michael Barutciski argues that it can be done (Is a diplomatic solution possible for Roxham Road?:

On the day that Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette celebrated the mass relocation of Roxham Road migrants to Ontario, her boss, Premier François Legault, told reporters he couldn’t understand why the U.S. wasn’t willing to take border-crossers back.

He met U.S. Ambassador David Cohen on Tuesday, and then said he doesn’t know why the U.S. won’t change a border agreement so people who enter Canada at Roxham Road, an unofficial crossing between Quebec and New York State, can be returned to the U.S.

“I said to him, I don’t understand why it is taking so long to settle with the United States.”

Mr. Legault is an intelligent politician, so he must be deliberately playing dumb.

He knows the relief that government leaders feel when their intractable problem becomes someone else’s. Ms. Fréchette said the Quebec government was “very happy” that 372 of the 380 people who crossed into Canada at Roxham Road since Saturday had been relocated outside Quebec.

Surely Mr. Legault must have a clue as to why the U.S. government isn’t rushing to solve Canada’s Roxham Road issue.

The U.S. position is not an accident. It has for decades resisted doing what Canada wants it to do on this file.

To be clear, Quebec is right to want some of the migrants, many of whom will seek asylum, to be relocated. The RCMP intercepted 39,171 people entering Canada at Roxham Road in 2022, and the province, and especially Montreal, complained their capacity to settle people was strained. The border is Canada’s responsibility, not just Montreal’s, or Quebec’s.

And certainly, it would be easier on all levels of government in Canada if the United States just took all those people back. But it has resisted.

Politicians shouldn’t act as though getting the U.S. to change should be a snap. Justin Trudeau’s government has hinted a deal might be coming, but we might want to see it before we believe it. You’d have to think there would be some serious quid pro quo. It isn’t the Americans’ border problem.

There was a period in the pandemic when the U.S. did accept people back, in theory temporarily, when both countries closed their borders. Not many people tried to cross at Roxham Road. But the U.S. ended that arrangement in November, 2021. People started crossing there again.

There was a long history before that. At one time, asylum-seekers could simply show up at any official border crossing and claim refugee status in Canada. But as the numbers grew in the 1990s, Ottawa tried and fail to make a deal. The U.S. declined. It was only after the 9/11 attacks, in a broad border pact, that the U.S. accepted a Safe Third Country Agreement that allowed Canada to return asylum-seekers who arrived via the U.S. to make their claim there.

But it only applied at official border posts, and for a pretty simple reason: The United States wanted it that way. It didn’t want the trouble of accepting people who might show up anywhere along the long border with Canada.

The agreement was always opposed by refugee advocates, but from the start there was also a concern that it would encourage people to cross the border in illicit places. Jason Kenney has said he tried to convince the U.S. to change it when he was immigration minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, to no avail.

Fast forward to now, when Roxham Road has become a well-travelled route, and the U.S. still isn’t itching to change it. And we shouldn’t be surprised, when the hottest political issue in the U.S. is illegal entries across the Mexican border, that the U.S. is not racing to stop 40,000 people from leaving.

If the U.S. did apply the Safe Third Country Agreement outside official border crossings, it would shut down Roxham Road, but more people would cross at the many other locations along the boundary.

Taking them all back would require more work and more patrols along the Canadian border when the U.S. devotes its resources to the Mexican boundary. The U.S. Border Patrol has 2,073 agents along the northern boundary, compared to 16,070 agents at the southern border – whose patrols logged more than a million “encounters” with border crossers in 2022.

And U.S. President Joe Biden couldn’t expect to be celebrated for making a deal with Canada that prevents tens of thousands of asylum-seekers from leaving the U.S. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat like Mr. Biden, has been giving asylum-seekers bus tickets to get to Roxham Road. No one should be surprised the U.S. isn’t jumping to “solve” this Canadian problem.

Source: The U.S. isn’t rushing to deal with Canada’s Roxham Road migrant problem

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Henley & Partners, Leader In Controversial ‘Golden Passports,’ Sets Sights On U.S.’s Ultra Rich

2023/02/17 Leave a comment

Of note:

Henley & Partners, the U.K.-based consultancy, has become the most prominent facilitator of so-called “golden passport” and “golden visa” schemes for the ultra-rich after decades of securing passports for the wealthy in Russia, India, China and more. Now it’s turning to the U.S. as its next major market, boasting an unprecedented uptick in the number of high net worth Americans seeking second citizenship.

Migration investment schemes, which effectively allow people to purchase citizenship or residency in exchange for an investment in a country, have long been controversial but came under a harsh new light after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Forbesfound that nearly half of 35 sanctioned billionaires had a second (or even third) passport, including through European investment migration schemes. Many of the most prominent citizens by investment schemes have since moved to halt sales to Russian applicants, revoke passports or shut down altogether—including most recently Ireland, which announced abruptly on Tuesday it was shutting down its decades-old scheme. Portugal’s program, which has been one of the most lucrative for Henley & Partners, is currently being reviewed by its government.

Despite the crackdowns in Europe, Henley & Partners says business is better than ever—and not for the reasons many may expect. On Wednesday, at a glitzy private luncheon at the Lotte New York Palace, a five-star hotel in Manhattan, the firm’s leaders, including CEO Juerg Steffen, touted the record number of inquiries and applications received by Henley & Partners in 2022, with the highest number coming from a somewhat surprising market—the U.S.—which Steffen claims is about 20% of the firm’s citizenship investment business in 2022, followed by India.

Overall, Henley & Partners’ business grew 25% last year, and another 35% the year before, Steffen told Forbes in an interview before the event. The company would not share revenues for “competitive reasons” but it takes a cut out of every visa or citizenship application, with higher charges for applications with multiple people (70% of applicants are families). The migration firm also runs a government consultancy business advising countries on how to start and run investment migration programs, which Stefan said makes up about one third of the group’s total business. The firm saysit helped set up “many” of the 30 residence and/or citizenship programs it facilitates, such as St. Kitts & Nevis, which it helped relaunch starting in 2006. Steffen claims the investment migration industry is now worth some $30 billion, including the amount invested, though others have pegged it closer to $3 billion.

According to a “USA Wealth Report” published in conjunction with the event, the number of Americans making inquiries to Henley & Partners about citizenship investment and residency options has increased more than four fold since 2019 (the company did not share exact numbers for either data point). The firm claimed it received more inquiries from wealthy Americans than any other nationality last year. That includes Russians and Chinese, though the former is likely explained by many of these programs halting Russian applicants, and the latter by China’s strict coronavirus-related travel restrictions; Steffen said there has been an uptick in interest from wealthy Chinese since the country’s borders reopened in January.

To accommodate the new levels of interest, Henley & Partners announced the opening of three U.S, offices in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. Steffen also said the company is planning to expand its workforce from 300 to 400 people by the end of the year. Previously, the company’s office in Canada handled all inquiries from Americans. One employee of the newly formed New York office said it is already working with 200 clients.

As for why wealthy Americans would be interested in getting another passport, Steffen claims that a number of U.S. billionaires started approaching Henley & Partners after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. “From our perspective it has probably to do with the political environment but also how the government handled Covid at the beginning. They realized, we have a private jet but we can’t just leave and go to another country even if it’s perhaps more secure. Then they realized how important it is to have more than one residence and citizenship,” he said.

But the U.S. is politically and economically stable relative to some of the countries where Americans are reportedly seeking access. According to the report, the most sought after programs among Americans were Portugal’s Golden Residence Permit Program, which requires a minimum real estate investment of nearly $300,000 and can take up to 18 months to process, followed by Malta’s, a program that requires its applicants to live in the country for 36 months and make a minimum investment of about $790,000. Also commonly pursued was Caribbean citizenship through St. Kitts & Nevis, which requires a significantly smaller $125,000 investment and can take less than half a year, according to the firm.

Critics have long pointed to the schemes as a vessel for potential corruption, money laundering and tax avoidance. “We consider that the sale of citizenship through ‘golden passports’ is illegal under EU law and poses serious risks to our security,” Didier Reynders, the European Commission’s commissioner for justice and consumers, saidlast March as the commission escalated its campaign against citizenship by investment schemes by calling an end to the programs.

In an April 2022 interview with Forbes, ” Eka Rostomashavili of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International acknowledged that while there are “legitimate reasons for wanting to have a second passport,” she argued. Many wealthy Russians sanctioned for their connections to the Kremlin have EU passports “because they probably don’t want to live in the mess that they helped create.”

As the biggest player in the investment migration industry, Henley & Partners has landed in the hot seat more than once in recent years after a slew of reports raised questions about some of people it has helped get passports. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) published a report in March 2022 detailing how the firm helped a “bevy of high-risk clients” gain citizenship, including some individuals with questionable backgrounds who were later sanctioned or convicted of crimes.

Henley & Partners has repeatedly responded to these allegations asserting it follows all local and international laws and regulations. In his interview with Forbes, Steffen echoed these points, saying that while the industry is largely unregulated, Henley & Partners follows an extensive due diligence process that involves looking at a person’s criminal record from everywhere they’ve lived in the past 10 years and consulting with external investigative companies that write reports ranging from 30 to 70 pages on each potential client. “For us, it’s of course, very important from a reputational perspective,” said Steffen. He said that it took a year to move through all the regulatory hurdles required to start its business in the U.S.

Whether the demand is as high as it claims, moving into the U.S. market seems to offer another important benefit to Henley & Partners, which is a shot at building legitimacy for an industry that has been delivered significant blows over the past year. Steffen says he isn’t worried. While some programs have tightened their application criteria or even closed, he said the firm has been conversing with many new governments open to launching programs. “It’s getting mainstream and most of the countries actually have these programs now,” said Steffen.

Source: Henley & Partners, Leader In Controversial ‘Golden Passports,’ Sets Sights On U.S.’s Ultra Rich

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with ,

New US race, ethnicity standards proposed; first since ’97

2023/01/28 Leave a comment

Long overdue (rejected under the Trump administration):

A Middle Eastern and North African category could be added to U.S. federal surveys and censuses, and changes could be made to how Hispanics are able to self-identify, under preliminary recommendations released Thursday by the Biden administration in what would be the first update to race and ethnicity standards in a quarter century.

The federal government’s standards haven’t been changed since 1997, two decades after they were created as part of an effort to collect consistent race and ethnicity data across federal agencies when handling censuses, federal surveys and application forms for government benefits.

Questions about race and Hispanic ethnicity are asked separately using the 1997 standards. They would be combined into a single question under the initial proposals, which were made by a working group of representatives from different federal agencies convened by the Office of Management and Budget.

Some advocates have been pushing for combining the race and Hispanic origin questions, saying the way race is categorized often confuses Hispanic respondents who are not sure how to answer. Tests by the Census Bureau in the 2010 census showed that combining the questions yielded higher response rates.

Using the 1997 standards, U.S. residents from Middle Eastern and North African countries were encouraged to identify as “white.” Under the new proposal, there would be a separate category for people often referred to by the “MENA” acronym. The Census Bureau recommended adding a MENA category to the 2020 census form, but the Trump administration dropped the idea.

“Research suggests that many MENA respondents view their identity as distinct from White, and stakeholders have, for over 30 years, advocated for collecting MENA information separate from White,” the Biden administration said in a Federal Register notice that will be published on Friday.

Among the countries of origin that would get a check for the MENA category would be Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Morocco and Israel, the notice said.

The proposals encourage the collection of more detailed race and ethnicity information by allowing respondents on government forms to list their country of origin when answering a question about their race or ethnicity. They also recommend striking from federal government forms the words “Negro,” “Far East” — and the use of the terms “majority” and “minority,” saying they can be considered pejorative or outdated, and that the standards need to be “respectful of how people refer to themselves.”

The need to update the standards was driven by increasing racial and ethnic diversity, a growing number of people who identify as more than one race or ethnicity, and changing immigration and migration patterns, according to the Federal Register notice.

The working group said their proposals were preliminary and that they don’t yet reflect the official standards of the federal government since they will continue to be hashed out with input from the public. The goal is to ensure that that “the standards better reflect the diversity of the American people,” Karin Orvis, the U.S. chief statistician, said in a blog post.

“As we consider these recommendations, we want to hear directly from the American people,” Orvis said.

Source: New US race, ethnicity standards proposed; first since ’97

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No deal expected on ‘irregular’ border crossings when Justin Trudeau hosts Joe Biden

2023/01/26 Leave a comment

Of note:

The Liberal government does not expect to resolve concerns about the northward flow of refugees at unofficial Canada-U.S. border crossings when President Joe Biden visits Canada in March, says Immigration Minister Sean Fraser.

Biden’s visit to Ottawa, his first official trip to Canada since becoming president, will likely be in the first half of March, although no date has been set for the bilateral meeting, sources say.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Biden met recently in Mexico and at several international summits, as well as virtually since the Democratic president’s 2021 inauguration, and the two leaders set out a so-called “road map” in 2021 to guide bilateral actions in areas of co-operation.

But that road map of priorities does not expressly include any revision of a 2004 agreement called the Safe Third Country Agreement, even though the agreement itself requires continual review.

The agreement applies to refugee claimants entering at official border crossings and requires them to make asylum claims in the first “safe country” they arrive in. However, it doesn’t apply to those who sneak across or arrive at unofficial or “irregular” crossings, such as Roxham Road, near Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle at the Quebec-New York border.

Those asylum-seekers are permitted to remain in Canada and file refugee claims. As a result, during the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigrants south of the border, a flood of refugee claimants poured into Canada via irregular crossings. Asylum-seekers also try to enter the U.S. irregularly from Canada.

Canada has been trying, unsuccessfully, to get the U.S. to expand the agreement to all border crossings, which would close the loophole and end the incentive to use irregular crossings.

Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette told La Presse she hoped the issue would be resolved during the Biden visit, calling it is “essential” to “correct” the agreement to stem the flow of irregular migrants into Quebec.

Fraser downplayed any prospect of a resolution soon.

“There’s not necessarily a giant point of disagreement that we need to overcome” in talks with the U.S., Fraser said.

He said only that there is an “opportunity to potentially advance” the discussions, adding there are “regulatory” and “legislative” issues to resolve, which he declined to identify.

“There’s a mutual expectation that there can be open and frank and confidential conversations between parties, but there are regulatory processes as well that will have to take some time to play out before changes can be made official,” Fraser said.

Meanwhile, migrant and refugee advocates have challenged the constitutionality of the Safe Third Country Agreement at the Supreme Court of Canada, saying it violates the constitutional rights of those seeking asylum by turning them back to the U.S., where critics say they face detention if not outright deportation to unsafe countries of origin. The high court has reserved judgment.

Source: No deal expected on ‘irregular’ border crossings when Justin Trudeau hosts Joe Biden

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Marshall: Biden gets real on immigration

2023/01/21 Leave a comment

One take:

No issue better illuminates America’s debilitating political stalemate than immigration. Everyone knows there’s a mounting humanitarian and law enforcement crisis on our southern border, but our political leaders find it safer to appease their most militant partisans than to work together to forge pragmatic solutions.

That may be changing. After ignoring an unprecedented surge of migrants for two years, President Biden has announced some modest steps toward restoring order. His reward for taking on this combustible issue is a fusillade of criticism from rightwing nativists who say he’s not serious and leftwing activists worried that he is.

Source: Biden gets real on immigration

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A new program lets private citizens sponsor refugees in the U.S.

2023/01/20 Leave a comment

Welcome return:

Everyday Americans will be able to help refugees adjust to life in the U.S. in a program being launched by the State Department as a way to give private citizens a role in resettling the thousands of refugees who arrive every year.

The State Department plans to announce the program, dubbed the Welcome Corps, on Thursday. The agency aims to line up 10,000 Americans who can help 5,000 refugees during the first year of the program.

“By tapping into the goodwill of American communities, the Welcome Corps will expand our country’s capacity to provide a warm welcome to higher numbers of refugees,” according to the announcement.

The State Department has traditionally worked with nonprofit groups that specialize in refugee issues to help people from around the world when they first arrive in the country and face a dramatically different way of life. Under the program being announced Thursday, five or more Americans would be able to form a group and fill this role as well.

They would apply to privately sponsor refugees to resettle in America, and would be responsible for raising their own money to help the refugees during their first 90 days in the country. Assistance would include everything from finding a place to live to getting kids enrolled in school.

A consortium of nonprofits with expertise in refugee resettlement will help oversee the vetting and certification of people and groups who want to be private sponsors. They’ll also offer training so private sponsors understand what’s needed to help refugees adjusting to life in America. The consortium will be responsible for monitoring the program.

The new initiative will roll out in two phases, according to the State Department. Under the first phase, private sponsors will be matched with refugees already approved for resettlement under the U.S. Refugee Assistance Program. That will start during the first half of 2023.

In the second phase of the program, private sponsors would be able to identify refugees abroad that they would like to help and then refer those people to the Refugee Assistance Program and assist them once they arrive in the U.S.

The Welcome Corps program comes on the heels of a similar, smaller scale endeavor under which Americans were able to sponsor Afghans or Ukrainians fleeing their country. That program launched in October 2021 and has helped just over 800 people coming to America through a network of 230 certified sponsors.

President Joe Biden vowed in a 2021 executive order to restore the U.S. as the world’s haven and called for private sponsorship of refugees. The previous administration, under President Donald Trump, had largely rolled back the refugee program.

Source: A new program lets private citizens sponsor refugees in the U.S.

Filed under Refugees Tagged with ,

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