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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Momani: Biden’s futile trip to Saudi Arabia

2022/07/20 Leave a comment

Of note. Pivoting to address new circumstances has consequences:

American President Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia this past weekend was bad theatre. At best it gave the impression of him addressing American consumers’ woes and at worst reaffirmed every skeptic’s view of hypocritical U.S. foreign policy. Make no mistake – this trip would not have happened were it not for Mr. Biden’s dwindling approval ratings at home, attributed in part to rising inflation and growing fears of a recession. Both economic woes are tied to high energy costs caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Biden administration officials provided a laundry list of reasons for the President’s trip, from the long-time favourite of “promoting peace in the Middle East” to getting the Saudis to increase oil production to ease prices on American consumers. But geopolitical and oil market experts had rightly assessed that nothing substantive would come from this trip when it came to either issue. Despite Israeli-Saudi commercial, defence and intelligence ties being at an all-time high, the frail and elderly King Salman was not expected to sign a formal peace treaty with the Israelis. He will instead leave this to his son, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), to ink when he becomes king.

On oil, Saudi Arabia is already pumping crude at record levels and has very little spare capacity for export. Saudi Arabia’s scorching summer heat also means it has high energy needs of its own to power its air conditioners. Hence while Saudi officials paid lip service to providing the world with a stable supply of crude oil, few expected any substantive change to its output levels. Unsurprisingly, oil prices have not decreased since Biden’s Saudi trip.

Yet, this trip’s futility highlights a recurrent issue in U.S. foreign policy. It was only a few short years ago that Mr. Biden, then on the presidential campaign trail, said he would make Saudi Arabia “a pariah” for its involvement in the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist and Saudi democracy activist, Jamal Khashoggi. There has been little change in U.S. foreign policy toward Saudi Arabia during Biden’s time as President, but at minimum the soon-to-be ruler of the oil-rich kingdom was seen as persona non grata in international forums. At G20 meetings, most Western leaders went to great lengths to avoid being pictured with the ostracized monarch.

Of course, leaders of China and Russia have been quite happy to be seen with MBS. They have continued to make lucrative deals with the world’s largest oil exporter and weapons importer. For much of the world, business and realpolitik sadly eclipses any notion of a human rights-based foreign policy. While many may have scoffed at Donald Trump’s transactional foreign policy during his time in the presidential office, it can at least be said that he was transparent about courting Saudi Arabia for its money alone. He boasted at having encouraged them to buy more U.S. arms and to allow further American investment in the Kingdom.

Mr. Biden claimed U.S. foreign policy would change from the Trump era. Yet there was Mr. Biden this weekend giving MBS a fist-bump and proceeding to sit across the table from the man who, for ordering the dismemberment of Mr. Khashoggi’s body, was dubbed Mr. Bone Saw. Saudi media reported that MBS used the meeting with Biden to point out the U.S.’s own human rights failures, from the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison abuses when the U.S. occupied Iraq to the most recent whitewashing of the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

There are consequences to this U.S. hypocrisy. When the West asked for support in condemning Russia for its brutal war and occupation of Ukraine, it was no wonder that so many long-time U.S. allies declined to support a UN resolution condemning Russia. Across the world, states have rebuffed the U.S. and the West, instead choosing to continue to do business with Vladimir Putin’s regime despite the horrors it inflicts on Ukraine. They have rejected the West’s normative framing of the war on Ukraine as one of Western values of democracy versus autocracy.

After all, it only took Mr. Biden two years for an about-face on an autocratic Saudi Arabia. How long will it be before the West capitulates and imports Russian oil and grain, or calls the occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas “facts on the ground.” The consequences of Mr. Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia is an affirmation of what has long been skeptics’ view of U.S. foreign policy: self-serving and hypocritical.

Bessma Momani is professor in the department of political science at the University of Waterloo and senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

Source: Biden’s futile trip to Saudi Arabia

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Asian American Student Success Isn’t a Problem

2022/07/16 Leave a comment

Interesting study and analysis, suggesting that the dropping of SAT requirement reflects “white angst” that maintaining SAT requirements would disadvantage white students compared to Asians:

Over the past three years, as universities across the country have abandoned standardized test requirements and moved toward more holistic models for admission, a persistent yet largely unexamined question has arisen: Would these changes be happening if white students were at the top of the academic food chain? The performance gap between Asian American and white high school students on standardized tests has grown over the past decade. In 2018, for example, Asian American students, on average, scored 100 points higher on the SAT than white students. Just three years later, in 2021, that gap had risen by over 25 percent, to 127. Many of the universities that have dropped the SAT requirement have cited a desire for diversity and equity and a de-emphasis on hard-core academic competition. (This has always struck me as errant and, frankly, self-serving reasoning. If elite colleges actually want economically and racially diverse campuses free from the academic stressors that plague high school students, they should take their own advice and stop competing so fiercely to prove that they are the most exclusive places of higher learning in the world.)

All this appears to be a noble enough goal. But is it possible instead that the move toward greater diversity and away from academic competition might also be a way to ensure that students from white, wealthy families can still compete with high-achieving Asian American students? In other words, how much of these changes should we attribute to an evolution in the way we think about equality in education and how much should be chalked up to white parents who are now worried that their children are being outcompeted?

Natasha Warikoo, a sociology professor at Tufts, has published a fascinating and worthwhile book about this phenomenon, titled “Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools.” Warikoo details her findings from a three-year ethnography of an anonymized suburb that she calls Woodcrest. Like many other suburbs around major cities, Woodcrest has seen a browning of its population over the past 50 years. In 1970, the town was over 95 percent white, thanks to years of discriminatory zoning practices. Starting in the 1990s, well-educated Asian immigrants who came to the United States to work in the tech industry began to move to Woodcrest in search of better schools. Now roughly a third of Woodcrest’s population is Asian American.

So what happens when a big influx of wealthy Asian immigrants, mostly from China and India, come to a liberal, wealthy suburb that has always prided itself on its academic accomplishments? Warikoo correctly notes that for years, scholars and sociologists have simply assumed that these relatively privileged and upwardly mobile Asian Americans would simply melt into the upper middle class. What she found through her research is that the transition isn’t quite so smooth, in large part because many of the white families who live in these suburbs are worried that the new competition from Asian students will harm their own children’s chances of getting into elite colleges. As a result, some white parents in Woodcrest called for a de-emphasis on academics and a prioritization of mental health. Much like the moves away from the SAT, these changes sound worthwhile, but it’s worth examining the motives behind them.

I spoke to Dr. Warikoo about her book and the issues it explores, including her theories on why Asian American students in Woodcrest have done so well, the limits of assimilation, and what she thinks should be done about the scarcity mind-set that she believes drives all of this.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

First things first: We should acknowledge that Woodcrest is a pseudonym and you do not specify which state it’s in. But can you tell us where some of these upper middle class, Asian American and white suburbs are located?

To identify a site for this research, I looked at cities with median household income in the top 20 percent — above $100,000 in 2010 — and where the Asian American population was at least 20 percent by 2010 and had grown since 2000. There are 34 cities around the country that fit that description, including Cupertino and Saratoga in Northern California, Sugar Land in Texas (a Houston suburb), Syosset on Long Island and Lexington in Massachusetts. White and Asian parents alike move to many of these places to send their children to their top-rated public schools. Many are suburbs that grew during the era of school desegregation, as whites left cities in large numbers and passed laws designed to keep working-class people out, like minimum housing lot size requirements and bans on the building of multifamily homes.

Why are Asian families moving to these affluent, white suburbs?

For the same reason that white American families are moving to them — in pursuit of the public schools, because of the school system, strong reputation, high levels of achievement, and in part because the community is so well educated. Some of the Asian immigrant families are also drawn to this town because there is a quorum of people from their home country, particularly Indians and Chinese immigrants, so they like the diversity.

How are these families received by the people who already live there? You note in your book that a lot of these communities are like Woodcrest in that they’re filled with affluent, white progressives with Black Lives Matter signs in their yards.

On one hand, I think there’s appreciation for the diversity that these immigrant families bring. They enable those white families to say, “We live in a diverse town.” And they do. Some kinds of diversity are glaringly missing — for example, there are not very many Black or Latinx families — but it’s not an exclusively white town.

On the other hand, I think over time, as the Asian American population grows and their kids are doing quite well academically, there’s — among some white families — a little bit of unease about these new Asian families. Those white families might think, These Asian families do things a little differently, they focus on academics more than a lot of the white families, they prioritize different things. That brings concern about how the community is changing.

This only really happens when the immigrant population there reaches a certain number. When there’s only a few of them, the culture doesn’t really change, but as they grow, concerns start to emerge, like: Is the high school becoming too competitive? Are too many people putting their kids in extracurricular math classes so that now you can’t get into honors unless you do these classes? Or is it impossible for my child now to become class valedictorian?

In the book, you describe what some white parents in Woodcrest see as a loss of status. How does this manifest itself?

There’s two responses that I talked about in the book. One is that there’s a small minority of white families who pull their kids out of the public schools and send them to private school so they can have a less competitive, less intensive environment.

The other thing is that they push for policies to reduce academic competition. The school had already ended class rankings, they don’t name a valedictorian — that all had happened before I started this research. Then they reduced homework. And this was something that a lot of the white parents talked about is important to them. A lot of the Asian families didn’t agree with that. The district actually ended up ending homework in the elementary schools. And a lot of the Asian families didn’t agree with that either.

Interestingly, there was never any talk of limiting how many extracurriculars kids can participate in or the number of hours on the field that sports can require, or anything like that.

How much of some of today’s educational policy shifts — whether it’s getting rid of the SAT or the push to eliminate test-in magnet schools with large Asian populations — comes from this anxiety over a loss of status?

It’s true that Black activists have been talking for decades about how the SAT is problematic; the way that students are admitted to these exam schools is problematic. The N.A.A.C.P. has done a lot of work on this for decades and has not made much headway. And is it a coincidence that whites are listening now? I don’t think it’s entirely coincidental.

Still, I see that shift as positive. If we are going to have elite colleges and high schools, then they must be truly accessible to children of all races and from all neighborhoods. Currently, the exams seem to make elite colleges and especially exam schools much less accessible to Black and Latinx youth, especially those living in neighborhoods and attending middle schools from which very few students historically have attended the exam schools.

One of the questions the book raises is about how much we should ascribe Asian success to cultural differences. This is a very contentious topic for the understandable reason that if you say that there are Asian American cultural norms that help them to perform well academically, the question then turns to why other populations don’t do as well. What did your research find on this question?

What I reject is this idea that Asians value education any more than the white families or Black families. The school did a survey, and one of the questions they asked kids was to what extent your parents pressure you to get good grades. And the group that reported the highest level of pressure was the Black kids. Most of those kids are actually kids who are part of the busing program, so they’re coming from the urban center; they’re not living in Woodcrest.

So I think this idea that Asian parents pressure their kids and that’s why they’re doing well in school is not true. What I do see is this: I use this idea of “cultural repertoires” in the book. The idea is that we all have a tool kit for how to get ahead. We get these tools from our parents, from our neighbors, from our cousins and aunts and uncles.

So, the bulk of these immigrant parents went to school and did well in China and India. That’s how they ended up in Woodcrest. And almost all of these people would have gone to supplementary academic classes after school when they were children because that’s just what you do in those countries, right? And so that’s the tool kit they bring with them. And because they come from countries where these decisions are made by evaluating their scores on standardized tests, that’s what they prepare for. And then they impart that on their children.

The American-born, mostly white parents in this town also went to selective colleges. They get that those colleges want a more well-rounded student; they understand the pathway to sports through recruiting and having a talent that’s beyond academics. So that’s something that becomes important to them. Again, different tool kits.

When I think about families who are not in this community — mostly Black and Latinx families — they have their own strategies, and they are trying as well, but they may not have a supplementary education class center in their neighborhood. They may not have relatives who went to a residential four-year college who can explain: What does it take? What does that look like? What do you need?

And so it’s not that they want it any less, it’s just that those strategies are not there. For me, those cultural repertoires are a way to think about what people do that’s different.

Source: Asian American Student Success Isn’t a Problem

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Confucius Institutes reappear under new names – Report

2022/07/11 Leave a comment

Not that surprising, unfortunately:

Chinese government-funded language and culture centres known as Confucius Institutes have rapidly closed down across the United States over the past four years amid pressure from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US Department of State, the US Congress, and state legislatures, concerned about China’s influence on universities. 

Of 118 Confucius Institutes that existed in the US, 104 closed by the end of 2021 or are in the process of doing so. 

Many institutions were forced to refund money to the Chinese government – sometimes in excess of US$1 million – according to a new wide-ranging report on Confucius Institutes (CIs) in the US by the National Association of Scholars, which was among the first to call for the closure of all Confucius Institutes on US campusesbefore the US Senate in 2019 called for greater transparency or closure.

However, “many once-defunct Confucius Institutes have since reappeared in other forms”, according to the association’s just-released report, After Confucius Institutes: China’s enduring influence on American higher education. It adds: “The single most popular reason institutions give when they close a CI is to replace it with a new Chinese partnership programme.”

US institutions “have entered new sister university agreements with Chinese universities, established ‘new’ centres closely modelled on defunct Confucius Institutes, and even continued to receive funding from the same Chinese government agencies that funded the Confucius Institutes,” it said. 

“In no cases (out of the 104 institutions) are we sufficiently confident to classify any university as having fully closed its Confucius Institute.” 

Rebranding and replacing

“Overall, we find that the Chinese government has carefully courted American colleges and universities, seeking to persuade them to keep their Confucius Institutes or, failing that, to reopen similar programmes under other names,” the report said.

American colleges and universities, too, appear eager to replace their Confucius Institutes with other forms of engagement with China, “frequently in ways that mimic the major problems with Confucius Institutes,” the report said. “Among its most successful tactics has been the effort to rebrand Confucius Institute-like programmes under other names.”

Some 28 institutions have replaced (and 12 have sought to replace) their closed Confucius Institute with a similar programme. Around 58 have maintained (and five may have maintained) close relationships with their former CI partner. About five have (and three may have) transferred their Confucius Institute to a new host, “thereby keeping the CI alive”.

Hanban, the Chinese government agency that launched Confucius Institutes, renamed itself the Ministry of Education Center for Language Education and Cooperation (CLEC) and spun off a separate organisation, the Chinese International Education Foundation (CIEF), that now funds and oversees Confucius Institutes and many of their replacements as part of a rebranding exercise in July 2020, designed to counter negative perceptions about CIs abroad. 

“In reality, the line between the Chinese government and its offshoot organisations is paper-thin. CIEF is under the supervision of the Chinese Ministry of Education and is funded by the Chinese government,” the report noted. 

Many CI staff migrated to CI-replacement programmes at the same university, according to the report which scrutinised a large number of contracts between CIs and US universities. It added that some CI textbooks and materials remain on the campuses of institutions that closed CIs.

The Chinese government has reacted by defending Confucius Institutes outright, but the report notes it has also “relied on the art of subterfuge, rebranding Confucius Institutes under different names and massaging their outlines to be less obvious to the public, and better camouflaged within the university”.

Three types of action were identified in the report: replacing the CI, maintaining a partnership in some way with the CI, or transferring the CI to a new home. 

Replacing the CI

Many universities are eager to ditch the now-toxic name ‘Confucius Institute’ but retain funding and close relationships with Chinese institutions, the report noted. 

“At least 28 universities replaced their Confucius Institute with a similar programme, and another 12 may have done so. Sometimes these replacement programmes are so closely modelled on CIs that we are tempted to call them renamed Confucius Institutes.”

Replacing the CI means the US institution “retained, on its own campus and as part of its own programming, substantial pieces of its Confucius Institute under a different name. This includes institutions that formed new replacement programmes with the Chinese university that had partnered in the Confucius Institute,” the report said. 

It also includes institutions that formed new China-focused centres that took on Confucius Institute staff, Confucius Institute programmes, or funding from the CLEC or CIEF, the successors to Hanban.

For example, the University of Michigan, among others, sought to retain Hanban funding even after the closure of the Confucius Institute. Federal disclosures cited by the report show the university received more than US$300,000 from Hanban in May and June 2019, just as the Confucius Institute was closing in June 2019, though the report notes these disclosures have since been deleted from the Department of Education’s website.

Maintaining a partnership

While some Chinese partners reacted with shock at the notification to close the CI, and even threatened to sever all other connection between them and the US university host, setting up a new partnership with a Chinese institution is the single most frequently cited reason given by US institutions for closing a Confucius Institute, the report found.

Forty of 104 institutions (38%) say they are replacing the Confucius Institute with a new partnership, often one that is quite similar to the Confucius Institute. “Many others do in practice arrange for alternative engagement with China, even if they do not say this in the same statement in which they announce the closure of the Confucius Institute,” the report said. 

The Chinese government often encouraged US universities, when they applied for a Confucius Institute, to first establish a sister university relationship with a Chinese university. For example, Arizona State University (ASU) became sister universities with Sichuan University, “having been led to believe that doing so would aid its bid to host a CI,” the report noted, adding that ASU did in fact establish a CI with Sichuan University, and the sister university relationship has survived the CI closure.

Upon closing a Confucius Institute, some US universities developed new partnerships with their Chinese partner universities, or maintained pre-existing partnerships outside the CI. Others transferred the CI to another institution, ensuring that the Confucius Institute did not really close but changed locations. Some universities engaged in several of these strategies at once.

The report tracked information for 75 of the 104 CIs that closed in the US. Of the 75, 28 replaced the CI with a similar programme, and another 12 sought to replace it, while 58 maintained relationships with their Chinese partner universities.

Many created something substantially similar to a Confucius Institute under a different name, as did Georgia State University, the College of William and Mary, Michigan State University and Northern State University.

The College of William and Mary replaced its CI with the W&M-BNU Collaborative Partnership in partnership with Beijing Normal University, its former CI partner. One day after the CI closed on 30 June 2021, the two universities signed a new ‘sister university’ agreement establishing the programme. 

Chinese universities have also proposed programmes similar to Confucius Institutes but funded by the Chinese university itself. For example, Jinlin Li, president of South-Central University for Nationalities (SCUN), wrote to University of Wisconsin-Platteville Chancellor Dennis J Shields, suggesting that “we work together on a university level to continue to offer Chinese language credit courses and Chinese Kungfu programmes”. He added that “SCUN will gladly continue funding this operation”. 

Replacing with another university programme

On being informed of CI closures, responses from Hanban “were initially characterised by shock and indignation, then by mere regret, and finally by well-coordinated efforts to woo colleges and universities into new partnerships”, the report said. 

Richard Benson, president of the University of Texas at Dallas, wrote in a letter cited by the report: “We will be arranging a new bilateral agreement with Southeast University to continue our mutually beneficial engagements.”

Benson went on to describe the “newly created UT Dallas Centre for Chinese Studies” which would house many of the programmes the Confucius Institute once ran – the former director of the Confucius Institute heads this new centre. 

Twenty-three universities said they would replace the Confucius Institute with their own, in-house programmes. However, 13 of these also said the CI would be replaced by a new partnership with a Chinese entity.

Ten of the 23 institutions announced plans to develop their own replacement programmes. Yet, at least four – University of Idaho, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Montana and Purdue University – did in fact operate these programmes in partnership with their former CI partner. 

Six universities–- Pfeiffer University, San Diego State University, the University of Maryland, the University of Arizona, the University of Washington and Western Kentucky University – said they intended to find a new home for the CI by transferring it elsewhere.

Reasons for winding down CIs

Most of the criticisms surrounding Confucius Institutes involve threats to national security, infringements of academic freedom, and the problem of censorship. But these are rarely the reasons colleges and universities give when they announce plans to close a Confucius Institute. The report found the most frequently cited reasons are the development of alternative partnerships with China, and changes in US public policy.

Only five of 104 institutions cited concerns regarding the Chinese government’s relationship to Confucius Institutes ¬– and two of these five proclaimed that all national alarm was due to the mismanagement of Confucius Institutes by other universities.

Citing letters that the institutions sent to the Chinese government or their Chinese partner university; letters sent to a US government body, internal announcements to the staff, faculty and campus community; and statements published on the institutions’ own websites or published by the media, the report found that replacing the Confucius Institute with a new Chinese partnership was the most popular reason given for closure, while the second most popular was US policy. Many gave no reason whatsoever. 

Of the 33 colleges and universities that cite public policy as a reason for the Confucius Institute’s closure, 19 cite the potential loss of federal funds, and 11 specifically cite the National Defense Authorization Act, which barred certain grants from the Department of Defense to colleges and universities with Confucius Institutes. Three universities cited warnings they received from the US State Department. 

Despite widespread public concern about the Chinese government’s ulterior motives for supporting Confucius Institutes, only five universities referenced these concerns. Two laid out possible problems with Chinese government interference but concluded this had not been the case at their university.

University of Wisconsin-Platteville Chancellor Dennis J Shields in a letter to CLEC and CIEF said: “Over the past two years, the United States of America and its Department of State have raised serious concerns as to the scope of the People’s Republic of China and Beijing’s influence over higher education institutions, both nationally and globally…

“Unfortunately, due to these recent and continued concerns raised by the United States federal government and public officials as well as the recently enacted legislation, I have reached the difficult decision to end the UW-Platteville Confucius Institute.” 

Shields stressed though, that the University of Wisconsin had good experiences with Hanban.

Seven institutions said the Confucius Institute attracted too few students and others cited scarcity of funds as reasons for closure.

Source: Confucius Institutes reappear under new names – Report

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Ali-Khan: Finding the American Dream in Canada

2022/07/06 Leave a comment

Of note, getting some coverage in major US media:

This is a festive period for Muslims around the world. One Eid, or Muslim celebration, has just passed, and another is coming up in July. I’ve left strings of starry lights in the tall windows of our family room, where they can be seen twinkling from the street in our neighborhood outside of Toronto. There’s a shadowbox-like window by the front door, where I’d hung a colorful garland of star ornaments at the start of Ramadan in April.

I wasn’t always willing to mark my family publicly as Muslim. In fact, we were three years in to becoming Canadian when I first realized that I could put up lights for our celebrations without any of the trepidation I’d felt in my hometown in Pennsylvania. There is a huge contrast between being Muslim in Canada and being Muslim in America today and it has a lot to do with Canada’s decision to tell the truth about its history, while America buries its own.
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We left America in 2017, eight months into Donald Trump’s term in office. That was not a coincidence. There was something malignant about the leap from ordinary, private Islamophobia to a state sponsored anti-Muslim agenda that made leaving feel urgent, for me and for my husband, but especially for our children. We worried for their physical safety, but also for the sense of themselves they were developing at four and six years old.

Recent studies and surveys by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) tell us our concerns were justified. ISPU has been a boon to American Muslims, who had previously lacked good data about themselves, helping us see more clearly how we’re faring. In 2020, half of all Muslim parents reported having a school aged child who experienced bullying related to their religious identity in the previous year. In almost a third of those cases, the perpetrator was a teacher or school official. In 2021, Muslims reported experiencing institutional discrimination at levels much higher than other religious groups, for example 25% of Muslims vs. 5% among those of other religious affiliations reported religious discrimination while receiving health care. At the airport, those figures are 44% for Muslims contrasted with 5% of the general public, applying for jobs, it’s 33% for Muslims and 8% for the general public. It’s increasingly clear that the appropriate comparison for the rate at which American Muslims are experiencing discrimination is not with other religious groups, but other racialized groups. It is also increasingly clear that anti-Muslim attitudes in America are durable, as attitudes towards other racialized groups have also been.

All of the myriad ways in which American Muslims experience anti-Muslim bias, threats, and discrimination appear to be having serious impacts on our mental health. A study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2021 found that American Muslims are now twice as likely to have attempted suicide than Americans of other religious affiliations. It attributes this spike to religious discrimination and a reluctance among American Muslims to seek mental health treatment.

I first noticed the uptick in these trends after 9/11 and then again in 2015, when my kindergarten-aged daughter was told not to say she was Muslim at school. The teacher who told her this was Muslim herself, the only other Muslim at the school in any capacity. While it was likely the instruction was meant to be protective, it was nonetheless worrying. Unwilling to navigate a landscape in which it was dangerous for my six-year-old to be openly Muslim at school and seeing that this sentiment was increasingly normative in our nation’s culture, we began to plan our departure.

It’s not that Canada is utopian for Muslims. Even non-Canadians likely remember the Quebec City mosque shooting of 2017, in which 6 men were killed and 5 others injured by a 27-year-old named Alexandre Bissonnette. The number of anti-Muslim hate crimes in Quebec tripled that year.

There was another mosque shooting just last week in Toronto. In 2019, Quebec passed Bill 21, banning certain public workers from wearing visibly religious symbols, widely understood as an attempt to prevent Muslim women in such positions from wearing hijab, though also affecting those who wear turbans, for example, or kippas.

Nor is Canada utopian for other racialized groups. Recent surveys and reports all suggest that Black and Indigenous Canadians continue to experience widespread discrimination in jobs, education, and social services, health disparities, and disproportionate rates of incarceration and violence. Like America, Canada has a legacy of Black enslavement and Indigenous genocide, as well as a long history of residential schools and police brutality. Like America, Canada interned ethnically Japanese people during World War II. When I was a child visiting cousins in Toronto, the epithet “Paki,” for South Asians, was ubiquitous. These aspects of Canadian history have driven modern racist attitudes and continuing disparities in wealth, land ownership, and political power.

So why move our children here? Why not make our stand where we have a large, layered community of friends and family? There is a specific element of Canadian governance that made us hopeful that our American dreams might be better realized in Canada. If you go to Canada’s Department of Justice website today, you’ll find this remarkable statement: “The Government recognizes that Indigenous self-government and laws are critical to Canada’s future, and that Indigenous perspectives and rights must be incorporated in all aspects of this relationship. In doing so, we will continue the process of decolonization and hasten the end of its legacy wherever it remains in our laws and policies.”

The Canadian government’s acknowledgement of itself as a colonial project that must be actively undone is a dramatic contrast to political discourse in America today. Americans rarely acknowledge the essential thefts of land and labor from Native and Black people that have made America possible. Certainly, America’s government has never articulated an intention to decolonize. Americans are taught that their country has already had its revolution, freeing its people from colonial domination.

Years ago, in preschool, my children brought home a flyer about how to make an apology. The first step, the flyer said, is to acknowledge wrongdoing. With its history of slavery and colonial genocide, Americans yet find this step so controversial that, today, we cannot even agree to teach our own history in public schools. In the years since my family moved to Canada, we find that while imperfect, this nation’s fundamental intention towards justice does, in fact, make it a better place for our children to live. Their elementary school curriculum, for example, includes a discussion of what it means to be a settler on land that was promised to First Nations peoples in treaties. It challenges our children to reckon with what human rights for all of us, newcomers from many waves of immigration, descendants of those trafficked in slavery, and Indigenous peoples, might look like.

The children know whose traditional land they live and study on. They think about where the descendants of those people are, and what debt they might owe to them. In the process they are developing the capacity to navigate competing interests, diverse identities, and unfamiliar traditions. They are building the tools for a better future through honest study of their nation’s past. They recognize that this model secures space for them, too. Recently, their teachers applied the same principles to create a meditation space in the gym for fasting children to use over lunch during Ramadan.

I don’t fully understand why Canada has chosen to confront its colonial legacy while America continues to minimize and deny its own. I continue to hope that America will eventually unite around a plain telling of its own history in choosing a path forward. It is, after all, the only path that is wide enough for us all.

Source: Finding the American Dream in Canada

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Roe vs Wade: How Disenfranchised Americans Can Immigrate to Canada

2022/06/29 Leave a comment

No surprise that various sites are highlighting this option, whether as clickbait or seriously.

The same happened during the Trump presidency but while interest was high, the actual numbers, while increased, were still relatively small:

The highly controversial move by the US Supreme Court to end women’s right to abortion is the latest example of how the country is lurching to the right on a number of important issues.

With the decision leaving many Americans feeling disenfranchised and frightened about the direction their country is headed, Canada could be an ideal destination for those who have simply had enough of the US.

Overturning Roe vs Wade triggered the closure of abortion clinics across the country, with some states already having laws in place to ban abortion in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s decision.

In the same week, as Democrat President Joe Biden celebrated the successful passing of mild gun control measures, the Supreme Court moved to make it easier to carry firearms by overturning a 1913 New York licensing law.

This came despite 225 mass shootings in the US in 2022 (or more than one a day), including the bloody massacre of 19 school children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas on May 24.

Same sex marriage and contraception could be next, with Justice Clarence Thomas suggesting the Supreme Court could reconsider a slew of decisions, placing further constitutional rights under threat.

The controversy dates back to the presidency of Donald Trump, when he was able to nominate three new Supreme Court justices – namely Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – and significantly shift the balance of the bench to the right with Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed amid controversy in 1992, leading the conservative bench.

The Trump appointees left many Americans fearful of the consequences, and now those fears are being realised.

Even before Trump’s Supreme Court picks, Americans were already considering their options to move north. His election victory over Hillary Clinton triggered a huge surge in the number of Americans researching how to move to Canada.

The number of American citizens becoming Canadian permanent residents rose in every year of the Trump presidency except the last, from 7,655 in pre-Trump 2015, to a peak of 10,900 in 2018, his third year in power.

After dropping off in 2020 due to COVID-19, the figure surges again in 2021 to 11,950, and is on pace in 2022 to exceed 12,000 for the first time.

Roe vs Wade: How Disenfranchised Americans Can Immigrate to Canada

Canada has a plethora of options for American citizens who wish to immigrate here.

In addition to economic programs, Canada also has an established family sponsorship immigration program, which include options for LGBTQ couples and common law partners.

With provincial programs also welcoming newcomers under a wide variety of criteria, American citizens interested in moving to Canada have many pathways open to them.

Source: Roe vs Wade: How Disenfranchised Americans Can Immigrate to Canada

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Revelations Show Trump Immigration Policy Was Supposed To Be Harsher

2022/06/27 Leave a comment

Of note:

While Donald Trump was president, reporters published shocking revelations about his administration’s conduct of U.S. immigration policy. It turns out reporters missed a few items. Former Cabinet officials and others have revealed immigration policy during the Trump administration was intended to be much harsher, including placing a quarter-million soldiers on the U.S.-Mexico border, enacting crueler measures to separate families and targeting children for deportation at American schools.

Stephen Miller’s Plan To Send ICE Agents To Identify Children To Deport At U.S. Schools: In a new bookdescribing her years during the Trump administration, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos revealed a plan by Stephen Miller to identify children at school for deportation under the pretext of checking for gang members. “There was also the overreach and bad ideas we stopped from occurring,” writes DeVos. “Stephen Miller, President Trump’s policy guru, summoned Nate and Ebony from my team to the White House for a discussion. After failing to properly clear them through White House security, Miller’s aides took them to a nearby restaurant (Cosi, for those who know the area) to have their meeting.

“Over the din of patrons slurping lattes and crunching salads, Miller’s men described a plan to put U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into schools under the pretext of identifying MS-13 gang members. The plan was, when agents checked students’ citizenship status for the alleged purpose of identifying gang ties, they could identify undocumented students and deport them. Not only was the prospect of this chilling, but it was also patently illegal. Nate and Ebony turned them down cold. But that didn’t stop Stephen Miller from subsequently calling me to get my thoughts on the idea. They were the same as Nate and Ebony’s: no. Just no.” (Emphasis in the original.)

DeVos is correct to characterize the plan as “chilling.” Once word spread that federal agents planned to check immigration status at schools, many children, not only undocumented students but native-born children with undocumented parents or siblings, likely would have stopped attending school and foregone their education. Do not be surprised if such a policy reemerges in some form in the future.

Stephen Miller’s Plan To Place The Equivalent Of Half The U.S. Army At The Southern Border: In FY 2020, the U.S. Army had approximately 480,000 soldiers, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. According to former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Stephen Miller wanted to put more than half of the U.S. Army (or its equivalent) on the U.S.-Mexico border—and had taken steps to make it happen.

“We’re in a meeting, waiting for the president to come out,” Esper told Norah O’Donnell during an interview on 60 Minutes. “We’re standing around the Resolute Desk. And he’s behind me. And this voice just starts talking about caravans are coming. And, ‘We need to get troops to the border.’ And, ‘We need a quarter-million troops.’ And I think he’s joking. And then I turn around and I look at him and these—and these deadpan eyes. Clearly, he is not joking.

“He repeats, ‘No, we need a quarter-million troops,’” Esper said. “And I just turn squarely around to him, face him, and say, ‘I don’t have a quarter-million troops to send on some ridiculous mission to the border.’”

Esper asked his chief of staff and General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to make sure Miller had not already set a plan in motion. “Milley comes back days later and the door opens up and he’s waving a document that’s in hand. And he says something like, ‘secretary, you’re not gonna believe this.’ And that’s when he explains to me that, yes, they were working. That we had developed a plan, initial concept of how this might happen. And I was just flabbergasted that, not only was the idea proposed, but that people—people in my department were working on it.”

“I gave General Milley specific instruction to tell NORTHCOM, Northern Command, to stop working on it, to cease and desist. And that if anybody had any questions, you tell them they should call me direct. I never got a phone call,” said Esper. “It was dead and it died, as it should.”

There is no need to place troops on the U.S. border. The United States could reduce the number of people who enter the country unlawfully by admitting more temporary workers. National Foundation for American Policy research found admitting more Mexican farmworkers via the Bracero program reduced illegal entry (apprehensions) at the border by 95% between 1953 and 1959. Such a reduction in illegal immigration would be accomplished without cost to taxpayers and would not weaken or interfere with other national defense priorities.

Efforts To Punish Parents And Children At The Border: “The U.S. government separated more than 3,000 children from their parents along the Mexican border in May and June 2018, the peak of President Donald Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy to prosecute adults for the misdemeanor offense of crossing the border illegally,” according to Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post. “DHS officials say more than 5,500 children were separated in all.”

“On May 10, 2018, Matthew Albence, then a high-rankingofficial at ICE, wrote in a memo to other officials at the agency that he was worried that parents would be returned to their children in Border Patrol stations too quickly after going to criminal court,” writes Sacchetti, on June 8, 2022, citing emails that became available to attorneys for migrants who were separated from their children by the policy. “Albence said CBP [Customs and Border Protection] should work with ICE to prevent this from happening,’ such as by taking the children themselves to ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement] ‘at an accelerated pace’ or bringing the adults directly to ICE from criminal court, instead of returning them to their children.”

The Trump administration ended its family-separation at the border in June 2018 after a public outcry that tearing children away from their parents was cruel. The revelations from previously undisclosed emails show Trump officials thought the policy was not cruel enough.

These three reports remind us that the Trump administration’s immigration policies were often cruel and unusual. The revelations indicate if the same individuals get a second chance, the policies revealed since Donald Trump left office may return along with new and likely harsher immigration policies.

Source: Revelations Show Trump Immigration Policy Was Supposed To Be Harsher

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The U.S. is reckoning with its troubled past of Indian boarding schools

2022/06/25 Leave a comment

Long overdue. Having an Indigenous head of the Dept of Interior makes a difference:

When the U.S. federal government began its Indian Boarding School Initiative in the mid-19th century, the goal was clear: to erase Indigenous cultures through a process of forced assimilation.

Now, the head of the Department of the Interior hopes to address the generations-long fallout from those policies.

On Wednesday, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland advocated for a Truth and Healing Commission to examine past U.S. government efforts to eradicate the languages, identities and cultural practices of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians. Her comments came as she updated the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on her department’s ongoing investigation into federal boarding schools, which released its first report last month.

Haaland told the committee the story behind the federal boarding schools is “a part of America’s story we must tell.”

“While we cannot change that history, I believe that our nation will benefit from a full understanding of the truth of what took place and a focus on healing the wounds of the past,” she said.

The U.S. government operated hundreds of Indian boarding schools

Between 1819 and 1969, the federal government operated more than 400 boarding schools across the country and provided support for more than 1,000 others, according to the department’s investigation. It also counted 53 schools with marked and unmarked burial sites of children, a number it says will likely increase as the investigation continues.

Haaland was speaking in support of the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act, which could allow Congress to issue subpoenas to non-federal entities to obtain more detailed information about the locations of the burial sites. It would also help trace the identities of the children back to their families, work with tribal leaders to arrange repatriation in a culturally-appropriate manner, and end removal of Indigenous children from their families by state adoption, social service, and foster care agencies.

Haaland introduced the legislation in the U.S. House in 2020, before her appointment to the Cabinet. A Senate version is now being sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Haaland told the committee she hoped it could work alongside existing efforts by the Interior Department to help Native American communities heal from the impacts of the policies.

She also requested $7 million in additional congressional funding– the same amount as last year– to continue the Interior Department’s work documenting and cataloging grave sites, as well as to create a “road to healing” that will work directly with tribal communities to document stories and assess their needs. She emphasized the need for the federal government to act in a holistic way.

“I believe that our obligations to Native communities mean that federal policies should fully support and revitalize Native health care, education, Native languages, and cultural practices that prior federal Indian policies, like those supporting Indian boarding schools, sought to destroy,” she said.

Haaland says she is a product of these policies

In her remarks, Haaland, who is a member of Laguna Pueblo, said her position as the first Native American cabinet secretary places her in a “unique position” to address the impacts of the U.S. government’s policies towards Native children.

“Like all Native people, I am a product of these horrific assimilation-era policies, as my grandparents were removed from their families to federal Indian boarding schools when they were only eight years old and forced to live away from their parents, culture, and Pueblos until they were 13 years old,” she said.

A group of other leaders from around the country, who also testified in support of the bill, described the impacts of the boarding school policies on their people, which they said have included physical, mental, and emotional traumas over the course of generations. Several described their own work to document those today.

Sandra White Hawk is president of the Minneapolis-based National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, which has been working to survey boarding school survivors and their descendants, and has found high rates of depression, PTSD, and suicide attempts among respondents. She said the truth and healing commission could provide an opportunity to allow people’s stories to be heard by a wider audience.

“It’s one thing to share your stories within your home, or in your community,” she said, “but it’s another place to share it, where it’s going to be validated with the outside entities that brought this on.”

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, who is the committee’s chairperson, said the boarding school era was a “dark period” in U.S. history and a “painful example” of how U.S. policy has failed Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawai’ians.

“We must do all we can to right this wrong,” he said.

Committee vice chairperson Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, pointed to the conditions at the boarding schools, where the Interior Department report noted children were subjected to emotional, physical, and sexual abuse as well as malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, and forced labor.

“And we know it just scratches the surface of what actually happened,” Murkowski said.

A pathway for stories from the elders who experienced the schools

La Quen Náay Liz Medicine Crow, president of the Anchorage-based First Alaskans Institute, called the government policies “intentional and purposeful”. And, she said, tribal elders are some of the only ones who will be able to tell the complete story about what really happened there. She described hearing her grandmother asked to recount experiences in boarding schools.

“And my grandmother responded, ‘I can tell you what happened physically, but I’m still not able to tell you what happened inside,'” Medicine Crow said, gesturing to her heart.

“This commission will open up a pathway where these stories, from people – who are now elders – will be heard,” she said. “Time is of the essence. We cannot waste any more of their precious life [by] not giving them a forum to share their lived experiences.”

Source: The U.S. is reckoning with its troubled past of Indian boarding schools

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Expats Frustrated With Taxes Consider Renouncing US Citizenship

2022/06/23 Leave a comment

Another survey by a tax company. Some interesting demographics (by and large, more “middle class” than very affluent):

Around 9 million U.S. citizens are currently living abroad, according to estimates by the U.S. State Department. Many of these “expats” have cultivated more permanent lives overseas, with established careers, relationships, and community ties. A new studyfrom Greenback Expat Tax Services sheds more light on some of the key aspects of life abroad and why many expats are now considering renouncing their U.S. citizenship.

Greenback, a tax services provider for Americans living abroad, releases a survey on expat life each year. For 2022, the company surveyed 3,200 U.S. citizens living in 121 different countries on various aspects of their professional, financial, and social lives. A majority of those surveyed were over the age of 65, and 34% had spent more than 20 years living outside of the U.S..

In addition to these demographic details, the survey also included questions on employment and income. 31% of surveyed respondents were employed by a large organization (of 250 or more people), and half reported an annual income below $100,000. When asked how the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted their careers, the majority expressed plans to work remotely at least part time moving forward.

Overall, the biggest point of contention for those surveyed was navigating U.S. taxes while living abroad. While most countries tax based on resident status, the U.S. government follows a citizenship-based taxation process. Under a citizenship-based system, all citizens are taxed under the same personal income tax system, regardless of where they live. American expats therefore must pay U.S. income taxes on any worldwide income, including salaries, investment earnings, and more. With this system in place, many U.S. citizens living abroad are required to pay U.S. taxes and taxes in their host country each year.

In addition to tax filings, some U.S. citizens may be required to report foreign accounts to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, depending on the total value of their accounts. Reporting foreign accounts is a lesser-known requirement often overlooked by expats as they navigate life abroad, and failure to do so can result in serious financial penalties.

Greenback’s survey reported that many expats find it difficult to navigate the U.S. government’s tax and financial requirements, and nearly 80% don’t believe they should have to pay U.S. taxes while living overseas. As a result of these frustrations, about one in four have “seriously considered” renouncing their U.S. citizenship. For those considering citizenship renunciation, the burden of U.S. taxes and a host of other political and personal motivations were cited.

Giving up one’s U.S. citizenship can be a complicated process and it does come with a price tag. Any individual officially renouncing their citizenship must pay a $2,350 fee to the State Department, and some with higher net worths may be required to pay an “exit fee” based on their worldwide assets. The State Department also warns against renouncing strictly for tax purposes, stating “persons who wish to renounce U.S. citizenship should be aware of the fact that renunciation of U.S. citizenship may have no effect on their U.S. tax or military service obligations.”

Source: Expats Frustrated With Taxes Consider Renouncing US Citizenship

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What to consider when deciding to renounce U.S. citizenship for tax purposes

2022/06/22 Leave a comment

Interesting to see this practical guide in the Globe, says something about the readership. And a reminder of issues related to citizenship-based taxation in the USA and residency-based taxation in most of the world:

For Americans looking to give up their U.S. citizenship, the decision isn’t just about national identity but also how much taxes they might have to pay when leaving the country officially.

While an American who renounces their citizenship will no longer have to pay U.S. taxes on their worldwide income, they could be forced to pay an expatriation tax, also known as an exit tax, upon departure, depending on their net worth and other rules the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has laid out.

“You can’t just hand your passport to the border agent and say, ‘I’m done,’” says Darren Coleman, senior portfolio manager with Portage Cross Border Wealth Management at Raymond James Ltd. in Toronto. “There’s a lot more to it than that.”

Mr. Coleman says advisors should be discussing with their American-citizen clientele the various steps of renunciation – and ensuring they have the proper legal and tax expertise when going through the process.

“You really can’t make any mistakes when you do it,” he says.

For advisors looking to help clients make the move, the goal is to not be considered what’s known as a “covered expatriate” in order to avoid paying the exit tax – a U.S. federal tax on assets with unrealized gains at the time someone cuts ties with the U.S.

Additional U.S. withholding taxes can apply later to payments from some types of deferred compensation arrangements, accounts and trusts, says Steven Flynn, a partner and Canadian and U.S. cross-border tax expert at Andersen LLP in Vancouver.

Americans can avoid the exit tax if they meet three conditions on the official date of expatriation:

  1. Their average annual net income over the past five years is less than US$172,000 (as of 2021, the rate changes annually with inflation);
  2. They’re fully compliant with their U.S. tax obligations for those five years;
  3. Their net worth is US$2-million or less.

With some planning, Mr. Flynn says the first two conditions are relatively easy to meet for those looking to avoid the exit tax.

However, the third condition on net worth can be a hurdle for many Americans, especially those who are older and whose assets have increased in value over the years.

Mr. Flynn also notes that since the conditions were put in place in 2008, the US$2-million threshold hasn’t increased with inflation.

He adds that Americans can still use strategies to lower their net worth, such as gifting assets to family members while they’re still U.S. citizens. Although the U.S. has a gift tax, he notes the exemption is currently about US$12-million, which is set to be reduced significantly by 2026.

Still, Americans who renounce their citizenship successfully but as a covered expatriate may not be done with the U.S. tax system, Mr. Flynn says. Any U.S. person who receives a gift or is a beneficiary of a former U.S. citizen who is a covered expatriate in their will is still subject to a 40-per-cent tax on the value of those assets.

“That’s pretty significant,” he says, “and a real concern for people with U.S. citizen or resident children.”

Importance of reason for renunciation

Alexander Marino, leader of the U.S. tax practice at Moodys Tax Law in Calgary who runs the firm’s renunciation group in Canada, saw a record number of people looking to renounce during the pandemic, in part because people more had time to go through the lengthy process.

The steps include not only working with experts to determine if renouncing is the right decision but also filing and addressing reams of paperwork before the final step of meeting in person with a consular officer at a U.S. embassy or consulate to officially renunciate.

In addition, Mr. Marino says U.S. persons need to ensure they’re communicating their reasons for renunciation properly, especially if they have plans to return as a visitor.

He points to the Reed Amendment, also known as the Expatriate Exclusion Clause, which bans certain former U.S. citizens from re-entering the country if they’re considered to have renounced for a tax avoidance motive or purpose.

“Knowing what to say in the interview is critical,” he says.

Mr. Marino says advisors also need to be aware of these issues to protect their clients – and themselves. He notes advisors have an obligation to identify who their U.S. citizen clients are under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act in Canada (FATCA), an international agreement signed between Canada and the U.S.

His team at Moodys works with advisors to help them determine if clients are U.S. citizens, particularly as some may not realize it or understand the impact of not disclosing it. For example, he says some people may have lived in Canada their entire lives but have American parents, which means they’re also U.S. citizens.

“You need to be asking the right questions,” he says.

Once it’s clarified if a client is a U.S. citizen, Mr. Marino says advisors can work with them – with the help of their U.S. legal professionals – to decide the pros and cons of renunciation. The process includes strategies to reduce or avoid the U.S. exit tax altogether when cutting ties with “Uncle Sam” properly.

Mr. Flynn adds that there are also non-tax implications to renunciation.

“If you change your mind years later, you’re not going to get any special status just because you were a U.S. citizen before,” he says. “You’ll go to the back of the line, like everyone else trying to become a U.S. citizen.”

The U.S. government publishes the names of Americans who renunciate, he adds.

Mr. Flynn also says that Americans who renunciate are still subject to taxes on assets or income made in the U.S., similar to a Canadian who works or owns assets in the U.S.

“The difference is that you avoid the bigger net, which is on your worldwide income and worldwide assets because you’re no longer a U.S. citizen,” he says.

Source: What to consider when deciding to renounce U.S. citizenship for tax purposes

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