U.S. International Student Enrollment Dropped As Canada’s Soared

2022/03/07 Leave a comment

Striking comparison and highlighting of Canada’s advantage in post-graduate employment and pathway to permanent residency:

The number of international students enrolled at U.S. universities dropped prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, but enrollment soared at Canadian colleges and universities. A new analysis finds Indian graduate students in science and engineering have been the most likely to choose Canada over the United States because Canada makes it much easier to work in temporary status and gain permanent residence. The findings carry serious ramifications for the future competitiveness of U.S. companies and American universities.

“International student enrollment at U.S. universities declined 7.2% between the 2016-17 and 2019-20 academic years, before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic,” according a new analysis from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP). “At the same time, international student enrollment at Canadian colleges and universities increased 52% between the 2016-17 and 2019-20 academic years, illustrating the increasing attractiveness of Canadian schools due to more friendly immigration laws in Canada, particularly rules enabling international students in Canada to gain temporary work visas and permanent residence.”

The pandemic lowered U.S. enrollment further. The enrollment of international students at U.S. universities dropped 22.7% between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years. Canada has not yet released comparable 2020-21 data but NFAP found other indicators that Canada also experienced lower enrollment in 2020-21 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Talented individuals possess a range of choices on where to live, study and work, and the findings are a stark reminder that immigration policies matter. The latest U.S. statistics analyzed are from a National Science Foundation tabulation of Department of Homeland Security international student data and exclude individuals on Optional Practical Training (OPT). The Canadian data are from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

“The number of international students from India studying at Canadian colleges and universities increased 182% between 2016 and 2019 while at the same time, the enrollment of Indian students in master’s level science and engineering programs at U.S. universities fell almost 40%,” according to the NFAP analysis. “Indian student enrollment at Canadian colleges and universities increased nearly 300% between the 2015-16 and 2019-20 academic years.”

The more restrictive U.S. immigration system has affected the choices of Indian students. “Canada is benefiting from a diversion of young Indian tech workers from U.S. destinations, largely because of the challenges of obtaining and renewing H-1B visas and finding a reliable route to U.S. permanent residence,” according to Toronto-based immigration lawyer Peter Rekai.

While international students in Canada can gain permanent residence within one or two years, the Congressional Research Service (CRS)estimates it could take up to 195 years for Indian immigrants to get a green card in the United States in the employment-based second preference (EB-2). Canada has no per-country limit or low annual limits for employment-based immigrants as in the United States.

Canadian statistics on Indian immigrants are eye-opening. “The number of Indians who became permanent residents in Canada increased 115% between 2016 and 2020 and 2021,” noted the NFAP analysis. (The analysis took the average of 2020 and 2021 due to processing issues in Canada.) 

Other troubling findings for America’s tech future: “The enrollment of international students in master’s level computer sciences at U.S. universities has declined sharply over the past four to five years, fueled largely by the decline in graduate students from India in technical fields,” according to the NFAP report. “Between the fall 2016 and 2019, international students enrolled in master’s level programs in computer sciences at U.S. universities fell 20%, from 62,270 to 49,900. Between fall 2016 and 2020, the number of international students enrolled in master’s level programs in computer sciences at U.S. universities declined 39% or 24,040. 

“The story is similar in U.S. engineering programs. Between the fall 2016 and 2019, international students enrolled in master’s level programs in computer sciences at U.S. universities fell 29%, from 60,130 to 42,890. Between fall 2016 and 2020, the number of international students enrolled in master’s level programs in engineering at U.S. universities declined 52% or 31,070.”

Congress can change U.S. immigration laws in a positive direction and see more international students choose the United States as the place to study and make their careers. Maintaining the status quo is a recipe for stagnant or falling international student enrollment and less innovation and prosperity in the U.S. economy.

Source: U.S. International Student Enrollment Dropped As Canada’s Soared

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The long fight for Freedmen citizenship continues in Oklahoma tribal nations

2022/03/05 Leave a comment

Long standing issue that pops up in my news feeds from time to time:

In 2016, LeEtta Osborne-Sampson, a council representative of the Seminole Nation who is Black, approached some colleagues about a disturbing picture hung on the wall of the Mekusukey Mission, which is used as the Seminole Nation council house and courthouse.

“It was a Black man sitting under a tree,” Osborne-Sampson said. “This Black man had a cloak over his head, a noose around his neck and his hands bound and his feet bound.”

Osborne-Sampson went to the Seminole Nation chief at the time, Leonard Harjo, and asked for the painting to be removed.

“You can’t get that removed,” she says Harjo told her. “It’s history.”

Osborne-Sampson is one of four members of the Seminole Nation General Council who are Freedmen — descendants of enslaved people brought to Oklahoma by tribal nations that were forcibly relocated here in the 19th century. The Seminole Nation grants Freedmen only limited citizenship rights, and three of the other five largest Oklahoma tribes don’t recognize their Freedmen as citizens at all.

Though Freedmen were guaranteed tribal citizenship by treaties signed in 1866, many of those rights have been chipped away or revoked entirely over the years. But Freedmen in all five tribes have been fighting to reclaim their status as tribal citizens, with mixed success. Despite setbacks, their efforts have gained momentum and are even the subject of a bill currently before Congress.

The history of disenfranchisement still surfaces today, Osborne-Sampson said, recalling incidents in which racist slurs and other insults were hurled at her and the other Freedmen council members. She also recalled stories of discrimination that her grandfather, Sam Osborne, who also served on the Seminole Nation General Council, used to tell her.

“To hear my grandfather tell us these things over the years I grew up, and he sat on Council as well — nothing has changed,” Osborne-Sampson said. “Racism is very high in the Seminole Nation.”

‘Their blood didn’t count’

In 1866, the United States signed treaties with the Cherokee, Muscogee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole tribes which granted reservation land to each tribe and abolished slavery within the tribal nations. According to those treaties, former slaves were to be recognized as full tribal citizens.

Today, however, only the Cherokee Nation recognizes Freedmen as full citizens. The Muscogee, Choctaw and Seminole nations have since amended their constitutions in ways that exclude Freedmen, and the Chickasaw Nation never enrolled Freedmen into the tribe at all, despite treaty stipulations.

The 1866 treaties declaring citizenship rights for Freedmen are the same ones cited to reaffirm the five tribes’ reservations following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma. Cheryl Phifer, a Chickasaw Freedman, said she sees the tribes’ unwillingness to accept Freedmen while claiming the jurisdictions given them by the McGirt ruling as hypocritical.

“They want the United States to uphold the treaty, but they don’t want to uphold the treaty either,” Phifer said.

Full citizenship in tribal nations would allow Freedmen to vote, run for office, and benefit from tribal services such as housing, education and health care, many of which are heavily funded by the federal government.

The exclusion of Freedmen goes all the way back to the institution of the Dawes Rolls in 1907, just months before Oklahoma was granted statehood.

The Dawes Rolls are a list of Native American people compiled by the federal government as part of the Dawes Act, which divided millions of acres of communal tribal land into individual allotments (which also violated the 1866 treaties). Those who accepted the divided tribal lands were allowed to receive U.S. citizenship.

“The purpose of the land allotment was to teach a concept of private land ownership, because the tribes prior to that all owned land in common,” said Angela Walton-Raji, a Choctaw Freedman author and genealogist. “Now once all the land allotments were finished, the purpose of [the Dawes Rolls] was to then open up the remaining millions of acres of land for white settlements, so Oklahoma could join the union.”

The Dawes Rolls included three categories: natives by blood, whites who had married into the tribe and Freedmen. Although many Freedmen had native ancestry, they were listed only as Freedmen, essentially erasing their blood relation to their tribe.

“They didn’t write down any blood quantum if they were Black. It was an application of the concept of a one-drop-of-blood type of thing,” said Walton-Raji. “The result was that any native blood that people who had been classified as Freedmen had, basically, their blood didn’t count. It was never recorded.”

So when the Cherokee, Muscogee, Choctaw and Seminole nations each barred Freedmen from tribal citizenship decades after the Dawes Rolls were finalized, many descendants of biracial natives were disenrolled from their tribes entirely, Walton-Raji said.

Cherokee Nation decision a victory for Freedmen

Among the five tribes, the Cherokee Nation is the only one that recognizes Freedmen as full citizens today. Freedmen had enjoyed citizenship rights until the 1980s, when the nation began excluding those not classified as “by blood” on the Dawes rolls. leading to a number of court battles. The “by blood” restriction was officially passed in a 2007 special election, and removed only recently by a unanimous ruling of the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court on Feb. 22, 2021.

On May 12, 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland approved a new constitution for the Cherokee Nation which explicitly ensured the protection of Freedmen’s rights and citizenship.

“We encourage other tribes to take similar steps to meet their moral and legal obligations to the Freedmen,” Haaland said.

The decision to remove “by blood” was in response to a 2017 U.S. District Court ruling in Cherokee Nation v. Nash, which determined that Freedmen descendants are entitled to full citizenship rights.

Marilyn Vann — who was appointed by Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. to the Cherokee Nation’s Environmental Protection Commission in September 2021 and is the first Freedman to hold a governmental office in the tribe — was a plaintiff on the case. Vann is also the president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes.

Vann said the legal change has not transformed everyone’s thinking, however.

“It’s true that the Cherokee Nation since Judge Hogan’s ruling in the Cherokee Nation v. Nash and Vann case has tried to live up to its treaty rights and treaty obligations,” Vann said. “But myself, as a Freedman tribal member, I’m aware that there are persons in the Cherokee Nation who oppose Freedmen’s citizenship.”

In a December 2019 interview with NonDoc, Hoskin said he and his administration have worked hard to improve relationships with Cherokee Freedmen.

“I’m very mindful that we need to make sure all of our services and all of our accessibility to the government is done based on that core principle of equality, and that even if overt or hostile discrimination is wiped away, there can sometimes be inadvertent acts that exclude people based on their descendancy, and I want to make sure that doesn’t happen in our government,” he said.

‘I’m not sure it will ever happen. Not in my lifetime.’

In 1979, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation adopted a constitution that restricted tribal citizenship to descendants of people listed as “Indian by blood” on the Dawes Rolls.

Muscogee Freedmen have made efforts over the years to regain citizenship rights. The Muscogee Creek Indian Freedmen Band even filed an unsuccessful petition in 2011 to register as an independent, federally recognized tribe.

The group also filed a lawsuit against the Muscogee Nation and U.S. Department of the Interior in July 2018, challenging the tribe’s constitution, but the suit was dismissed in May 2019 because the plaintiffs did not provide records showing they had applied for citizenship and had been rejected within the preceding decade.

Ivory Vann (no relation to Marilyn Vann), a Muscogee Freedman and a member of the Muskogee City Council, said the 2018 lawsuit was the best shot Muscogee Freedmen have had at regaining citizenship.

“That was the closest we’ve ever been towards doing the right thing,” Vann said. “I’m not sure it will ever happen. Not in my lifetime.”

Muscogee Nation communications director Jason Salsman said in a July 2021 interview with NonDoc that Muscogee Nation Principal Chief David Hill believes Freedmen citizenship is an issue that should be left to a vote of the people, and it could even be placed on a ballot this year. Salsman also said Hill was considering a string of town hall meetings on the issue.

Walton-Raji was skeptical of the idea of town halls to discuss Freedmen citizenship.

“Imagine having a town hall issued to discuss what is right,” Walton-Raji said. “Let’s have a discussion, shall we treat these Black people right?”

Asked about 2022 updates on the Freedmen question in the Muscogee Nation, Salsman provided a statement Thursday that community forums surrounding are expected to begin this spring:

We expect this spring to discuss the timing and logistics of community forums for Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizens to engage on the topic of citizenship eligibility for Creek Freedmen descendants.

Since we first brought up the idea of community discussion the nation has installed a new speaker of our National Council, we have navigated the issues presented by COVID and we have necessarily directed resources to not only implement McGirt, but, importantly, to protect the nation’s interests in an onslaught of legal challenges from the state.

This is a deeply personal and highly emotional issue that goes to the heart of identity for both Creek citizens and the descendants of Freedmen. The issue of citizenship eligibility also is a fundamental component of our Constitution, which can only be changed through a deliberative process that concludes with a vote of Muscogee (Creek) citizens.

Ivory Vann believes the only way Freedmen will be able to claim citizenship rights is through monetary pressure. He is a proponent of House Resolution 5195, a bill proposed by U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA43) which would tie federal funding for tribal housing and infrastructure to compliance to the 1866 treaties.

“If you take their money, they will come to the table,” Vann said.

However, the language regarding 1866 treaties has proved controversial, and HR 5195 is in danger of stalling, while a similar bill that does not include that language was passed by the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on Feb. 16.

‘Voting privileges only’ in the Seminole Nation

In 2000, the Seminole Nation voted to restrict citizenship to those who had one-eighth Seminole ancestry based on the Dawes Rolls, disenrolling nearly 2,000 Freedmen from the tribe.

Freedmen believe that a complicated 2002 court case regarding voting rights — Seminole Nation v. Norton — effectively upheld the Seminole Freedmen’s 1866 treaty rights, but the Seminole Nation has not granted them full citizenship as a result.

“When the Seminole Nation lost Seminole Nation v. Norton 20 years ago, they were directed by the BIA that the Seminole Freedman are members of a federal tribe, that we’re entitled to federal services,” Marilyn Vann said. “What did they do? They reissued the people’s tribal membership cards to say ‘Freedmen’ on the front, ‘00 blood quantum,’ ‘voting privileges only’ on the back.”

Today, the Seminole Nation grants only limited citizenship to its Freedmen, allowing them to vote, sit on governmental committees and hold office on the tribe’s General Council within the tribe’s two Freedmen bands. They are not eligible to hold senior leadership positions or to receive a number of services.

In October 2021, the federal Indian Health Service announced that Seminole Nation Freedmen are eligible for health care, after months of reports that the tribe was denying Freedmen COVID-19 vaccines.

Osborne-Sampson said relatives of hers who lived near Wewoka, where the IHS has a clinic, struggled to get health care early in the pandemic.

“Since COVID started in 2020, I have 17 family members that died of that, in that area,” Osborne-Sampson said. “There’s no doctor. You had to go 50 miles out just to get help, but that clinic sat right there.”

In November 2021, Osborne-Sampson met with Seminole Nation Chief Lewis Johnson and Assistant Chief Brian Thomas Palmer, who were elected in July and August respectively, to discuss the future of Freedmen in the tribe.

“They told us that they wouldn’t do anything different than the former chiefs, because they’re only going to go by what the Council says,” Osborne-Sampson said. “We took that as, you’re not trying to pull the nation together as one.”

Now, Osborne-Sampson and other Seminole Freedmen are preparing to pursue legal action by reopening Seminole Nation v. Norton.

“We are looking to take them back to court, to Washington federal courts and reopen that case to ask for our citizenship to be recognized and given,” said Osborne-Sampson. “The judge already granted us this, but we need to open it again to show that [the Seminole Nation leaders] have not done anything.”

A spokesman for the Seminole Nation said Chief Lewis Johnson had no statement regarding the citizenship question for Freedmen at this time.

Will the Choctaw Nation have a ‘meaningful conversation’?

In 1983, the Choctaw Nation created a new constitution that said tribal citizens must be descended from “by blood” citizens on the Dawes Rolls.

On July 1, 2021, Choctaw Chief Gary Batton wrote an open letter announcing an initiative to consider membership for Choctaw Freedmen.

“Today we reach out to the Choctaw Freedmen. We see you. We hear you. We look forward to meaningful conversation regarding our shared past,” Batton wrote.

Walton-Raji said the Choctaw-Chickasaw Freedmen Association (of which she is a member) and other Freedmen groups have inquired about starting the promised discussion but have not heard back.

“We have not heard anything as of yet, and perhaps it was never received. We don’t know,” Walton-Raji said. “But we wrote a letter immediately to Chief Batton’s office.”

What Walton-Raji does know is that members of Freedmen organizations have been following tribal council meetings since Batton’s open letter, and Freedmen have not been discussed so far.

“It’s not a discussion, it’s not on any of the agendas,” she said.

So, while the open letter is encouraging, Walton-Raji said she is not sure if there will be any further action from Batton.

“He’s maybe considering it, but it might just be a private thought. It’s never come up officially,” she said. “At least, it doesn’t seem as if there’s any action to go beyond the open letter.”

Randy Sachs, director of public relations for the Choctaw Nation, said tribal leaders had no further comment on the Freedmen question as they are “still evaluating the situation.”

‘Eventually, right is going to come’ in the Chickasaw Nation

The Chickasaw Nation jointly signed a Reconstruction treaty with the Choctaw Nation in 1866 but never enrolled its Freedmen as full citizens, as required in the treaty.

“In the Chickasaw Nation, it’s just a bunch of frustrated people who know they were never given citizenship,” Walton-Raji said.

Because the tribe never enrolled its Freedmen in the first place, Chickasaw Freedmen have a worse chance at winning a lawsuit regarding their citizenship, Walton-Raji said.

“They failed to do their judiciary duties for us,” said Verdie Triplett, a Chickasaw Freedman and Choctaw by blood.

Because they were never brought into the tribe, Chickasaw Freedmen were left without a nation until Oklahoma joined the union, in 1907, and without U.S. citizenship until Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924.

“They broke the treaty and have been allowed to continue business as usual since that time,” Walton-Raji said.

In response to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s asking tribes to uphold their “moral and legal obligations to the Freedmen,” Chickasaw Nation Gov. Bill Anoatubby said in a statement that “Chickasaw citizenship is a matter of sovereignty and is clearly defined in the Chickasaw Constitution.”

Triplett said he is not sure what the path toward citizenship entails, but he remains optimistic that Chickasaw Freedmen will eventually receive citizenship.

“I really don’t know what it’s going to take. I don’t know if it’s going to happen in my lifetime,” Tripplett said. “But eventually, right is going to come, it’s going to become reality. These tribes cannot continue to do what they’re doing because what they’re doing is wrong, and wrong is not going to prevail.”

Source: The long fight for Freedmen citizenship continues in Oklahoma tribal nations

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Uncertainty For Malta As US Bill Seeks To Ban Countries Which Sell Citizenship From Visa Waiver Programme

2022/03/05 Leave a comment

Of note:

Two US Congressmen, from both sides of the American political fence, have presented a bill to exclude countries which sell citizenship from its visa waiver program.

This bill could have serious implications for Malta, which is one of 40 countries that benefit from the program, which allows people to travel to the US for 90 days or less without obtaining a visa.

Republican Congressman Burgess Owens and Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen have now presented the ‘No Travel for Traffickers Act’, which would revoke a country’s eligibility for the US Visa Waiver Programme if they participate in citizenship-by-investment schemes.

The Act would also direct the US executive to cooperate with the EU and the UK to eliminate Schengen area visa-free travel for countries that sell passports and prohibit US public funds to vet ‘golden passport’ applicants.

“Also known as ‘golden passports’, these schemes require little vetting and are notoriously abused by human traffickers, international criminals, and corrupt oligarchs,” the Congressmen said. “Russia is one of the world’s worst offenders when it comes to using these golden passport schemes as a back door into other countries.”

Rep. Owens said the Act signals a critical step “in our efforts to isolate bad actors around the globe”, while Rep. Cohen warned citizenship-by-investment schemes allow traffickers to escape accountability for their crimes. 

Malta launched its original citizenship-by-investment scheme in 2013 but revamped it in 2020, only allowing applicants to apply for citizenship after one year of residence in the country against a €750,000 fee, or after three years if they pay €600,000.

The government has insisted due diligence procedures to vet applicants are among the strictest in the world.

It is facing renewed international pressure to scrap the scheme, including by European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

“We can no longer sell passports to Putin’s friends allowing them to circumvent our security. No more,” Metsola said this week.

Source: Uncertainty For Malta As US Bill Seeks To Ban Countries Which Sell Citizenship From Visa Waiver Programme

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Canada Admits 3 Times More Non-College Immigrants per Capita than the U.S.

2022/02/25 Leave a comment

Useful comparative data:

Many Americans want a more “merit‐​based” legal immigration system, and the country most commonly associated with this framework is Canada. Former‐​Attorney General Jeff Sessions, for example, characterized U.S. immigrants as largely “illiterate”, with “no skills”, and argued that America “should be like Canada” on immigration, evaluating them on their skills. But while Canada does favor economic‐​based paths to residence, it still admits far more non‐​college educated immigrant workers than the United States does as a proportion of its population—and it is planning to let in even more in the coming years.

According to Canada’s statistics, 244,800 non‐​college‐​educated immigrants over the age of 25 in the labor force entered Canada from 2015 to 2019, 0.65 percent of the Canadian population. During the same period, 729,797 immigrants with the same characteristics entered the United States, 0.22 percent of the U.S. population (Figure 1). In other words, Canada saw nearly three times more entries into its labor force from lower‐​skilled workers than the United States did in recent years on a per capita basis. This disparity would be greater if illegal immigrants were excluded from the calculation.

Despite admitting far more non‐​college‐​educated immigrant workers, Canada also admitted nearly 5 times as many immigrant workers with bachelor’s degrees and 4 times as many immigrant workers with advanced degrees as the United States did from 2015 to 2019 on a per capita basis. This means that overall, Canada admitted nearly 4 times more immigrant workers into its labor force than the United States did from 2015 to 2019. Note that the Canadian share of lesser‐​educated workers would be even higher if they were not also admitting so many higher skilled immigrants.

While it is true that Canada admits a much larger share of immigrants through economic channels than the United States does, it also makes it easier for them to qualify based on jobs where a college education is not required. It also admits as a share of its population more immigrants based on family ties and humanitarian grounds than the United States. Canada has just announced its largest ever legal immigration targets for the next several years, which will increase the rate of admission for both skilled and lesser‐​skilled workers.

While college‐​educated immigrants offer the United States the greatest productivity boost, the fact that a majority of job growth will come from jobs not requiring a bachelor’s degree provides a strong basis for the United States to increase both skilled and lesser‐​skilled immigration in tandem.

Source: Canada Admits 3 Times More Non-College Immigrants per Capita than the U.S.

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Black immigrants are more likely to be denied US citizenship than White immigrants, study finds

2022/02/25 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, only the overall rejection rates with no other data on other factors or reasons for the differences. In Canada, factors explaining differences in naturalization rates are income and education (see Trends in the Citizenship Rate Among New Immigrants to Canada):

Black male immigrants are less likely to be approved for United States citizenship than White immigrants, a new study released this week shows.

Researchers at the University of Southern California analyzed more than 2 million citizenship applications filed by US permanent residents between October 2014 and March 2018, and found racial disparities among those whose applications were approved.

Black immigrants, researchers say, have been denied citizenship more often than any other racial and ethnic group.

About 94% of White women and about 92% of White men were approved for US citizenship while Black men and women received an approval rating at or below 90%, the study shows. Black Muslim immigrants also had lower approval ratings at around 86%.

The data analyzed by researchers did not include details about reasoning behind each application denial — a key piece of information that would help determine what leads to the disparities, said Emily Ryo, the lead author for the study and a professor of law and sociology at the USC Gould School of Law.

CNN reached out to US Citizenship and Immigration Services for comment on the study’s findings.
 

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U.S. census director says the bureau needs to reduce chances of meddling after Trump

2022/02/23 Leave a comment

Of note:

The U.S. Census Bureau needs to work on ways the limit the potential for political interference with future national headcounts, the bureau’s director, Robert Santos, told NPR on Monday.

“I’m not too interested in looking back on and relitigating the events that occurred with the previous administration. But looking forward, I think it’s really important for us to make sure that there are policies and regulations that are in place to reduce the chance of meddling,” Santos said in one of his first media interviews since becoming the bureau’s leader in January.

After NPR previously reported on Santos’ comments about the Biden administration drafting new regulations to try to better protect the bureau from any interference from its parent agency, the Commerce Department, Santos said in an email that he misspoke.

“I am not aware of any regulations being drafted and apologize for the confusion,” Santos said.

Instead, he added, he meant to refer to ongoing work by the administration’s Scientific Integrity Task Force on improving the policies of federal agencies, including the Census Bureau and the Commerce Department.

Last month, a report by that task force, which included the bureau’s highest-ranking civil servant, Deputy Director Ron Jarmin, warned that the bureau and other federal statistical agencies “must protect against interference in their efforts to create and release data that provide a set of common facts to inform policymakers, researchers, and the public.”

The assessment came after years of meddling with the 2020 census by former President Donald Trump’s administration, which attempted to add a hotly contested question about U.S. citizenship status to the head count’s forms; added a series of political appointees with no obvious qualifications to the bureau’s top ranks; and cut short counting efforts after the COVID-19 pandemic delayed many of the bureau’s operations.

The moves by the previous administration have fueled calls for new ways to safeguard the once-a-decade head count’s integrity.

In recent decades, there have been proposals to move the bureau out of the Commerce Department and make it an independent agency. These efforts include bills in Congress introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York who currently chairs the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

“I will support whatever it is that Congress decides that they want to do,” Santos, who is expected to serve as the bureau’s director through 2026, told NPR. “There are many issues that need to be worked out if an independent agency was created. However, I’m comfortable with the current structure, and I will work with Congress in terms of whatever they decide.”

The first Latino to head the federal government’s largest statistical agency, Santos is weeks into a political appointment that has landed him in not only U.S. history books but also a hotbed of controversy over the results of the 2020 head count.

Even though the results have already been used to reallocate each state’s share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes, as well as to redraw maps of voting districts across the country, questions about accuracy linger over the count.

On March 10, the bureau is set to start releasing results of its own assessment of the data’s quality.

Concerned about the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and interference by the Trump administration, many census watchers are hoping to see to what extent the 2020 census may continue a decades-long pattern — the overcounting of people who identify as white and not Latino and the undercounting of people of color.

Flaws in the count carry big implications for political representation, the distribution of some $1.5 trillion a year and the country’s understanding of the people living in the United States. Santos and other bureau officials are under pressure to come up with new methods to mitigate the effects of a turbulent census.

Santos is also stepping into a heated debate over privacy protections applied to the 2020 census redistricting data and other more detailed information, just as the bureau ramps up its planning for the 2030 census, which could bring new ways of collecting data on race and ethnicity, particularly about Latinos and people of Middle Eastern or North African descent.

 Source: U.S. census director says the bureau needs to reduce chances of meddling after Trump

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USA: Investor immigrants say their applications are viable despite program lapse

2022/02/21 Leave a comment

Of note:

A group of immigrant investors have filed a lawsuit claiming the Biden administration is unlawfully refusing to process their applications for visas and green cards after Congress allowed a major visa program they participated in to lapse.

More than a dozen plaintiffs in a complaint filed in Seattle federal court on Thursday said that while a program earmarking EB-5 visas for investors who pool money has expired, federal law still requires U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service and the Department of State to process their applications, which were filed before the expiration.

The EB-5 program allows foreign citizens who invest $1 million in a U.S. business – or $500,000 in economically depressed areas – and create at least 10 jobs to qualify for visas and green cards.

The plaintiffs, who are citizens of Canada, Russia, India and other countries, applied to participate in the EB-5 Regional Center program, which reserves thousands of visas each year for investors who pool their money into large economic development projects.

Authorization for the program, which was first created in 1992, expired in June without action from Congress and its future is still in limbo. USCIS in December said it would not process visa and green card applications tied to the program until it is renewed.

But in Thursday’s complaint, the plaintiffs said the expiration of the program only meant that the government no longer had to grant a preference to applicants involved in the Regional Center program. The federal Immigration and Nationality Act still requires USCIS to process their EB-5 applications and set aside visas for them if they qualify, the plaintiffs said.

Jon Wasden of Wasden Banias, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that a decision in the plaintiffs’ favor could ultimately spur USCIS to process thousands of other pending applications.

USCIS and the Department of State did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case is Bajaj v. Blinken, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, No. 2:22-cv-00189.

Source: Investor immigrants say their applications are viable despite program lapse

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US funds for Canada protests may sway American politics too

2022/02/18 Leave a comment

Should it be a surprise that Canadians are being used as props for the US right?

The Canadians who have disrupted travel and trade with the U.S. and occupied downtown Ottawa for nearly three weeks have been cheered and funded by American right-wing activists and conservative politicians who also oppose vaccine mandates and the country’s liberal leader.

Yet whatever impact the protests have on Canadian society, and the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, experts say the outside support is really aimed at energizing conservative politics in the U.S. Midterm elections are looming, and some Republicans think standing with the protesters up north will galvanize fund-raising and voter turnout at home, these experts say.

“The kind of narratives that the truckers and the trucker convoy are focusing on are going to be really important issues for the (U.S.) elections coming ahead,” said Samantha Bradshaw, a postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford University. “And so using this protest as an opportunity to galvanize their own supporters and other groups, I think it’s very much an opportunity for them.”

By Wednesday afternoon, all previously blocked border crossings had been re-opened, and police began focusing on pressuring the truckers and other protesters in Ottawa to clear out of the capital city or face arrest, fines and confiscation of their vehicles. 

About 44 percent of the nearly $10 million in contributions to support the protesters originated from U.S. donors, according to an Associated Press analysis of leaked donor files. U.S. Republican elected officials, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have praised the protesters calling them “heroes” and “patriots.”

“What this country is facing is a largely foreign-funded, targeted and coordinated attack on critical infrastructure and our democratic institutions,” Bill Blair, Canada’s minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, said earlier this week. 

Demonstrators in Ottawa have had been regularly supplied with fuel and food, and the area around Parliament Hill has at times resembled a spectacular carnival with bouncy castles, gyms, a playground and a concert stage with DJs. 

GiveSendGo, a website used to collect donations for the Canadian protests, has collected at least $9.58 million dollars, including $4.2 million, or 44%, that originated in the United States, according to a database of donor information posted online by DDoSecrets, a non-profit group.

The Canadian government has been working to block protesters’ access to these funds, however, and it is not clear how much of the money has ultimately gotten through.

Millions of dollars raised through another crowdfunding site, GoFundMe, were blocked after Canadian officials raised objections with the company, which determined that the effort violated its terms of service around unlawful activity.

The GiveSendGo database analyzed by AP showed a tally of more than 109,000 donations through Friday night to campaigns in support of the protests, with a little under 62,000 coming from the U.S. 

The GiveSendGo data listed several Americans as giving thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to the protest, with the largest single donation of $90,000 coming from a person who identified himself as Thomas M. Siebel.

Siebel, the billionaire founder of software company Siebel Systems, did not respond to messages sent to an email associated with a foundation he runs and to his LinkedIn account.

A representative from the Siebel Scholars Foundation, who signed her name only as Jennifer, did not respond to questions about whether he had donated the money. But she said Siebel has a record of supporting several causes, including efforts to “protect individual liberty.”

“These are personal initiatives and have nothing to do with the companies with which he is associated,” she wrote.

Siebel has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and organizations over the last 20 years, according to Federal Election Commission records, including a $400,000 contribution in 2019 to a GOP fundraising committee called “Take Back the House 2020.”

The GiveSendGo Freedom Convoy campaign was created on Jan. 27 by Tamara Lich. She previously belonged to the far-right Maverick Party, which calls for western Canada to become independent.

The Canadian government moved earlier this week to cut off funding for the protesters by broadening the scope of the country’s anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules to cover crowdfunding platforms like GiveSendGo. 

“We are making these changes because we know that these platforms are being used to support illegal blockades and illegal activity, which is damaging the Canadian economy,” said Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Perhaps more important than the financial support is the cheerleading the Canadian protesters have received from prominent American conservative politicians and pundits, who see kindred spirits in their northern neighbors opposing vaccine mandates.

On the same day Lich created the GiveSendGo campaign, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn shared a video of the convoy in a post on the messaging app Telegram.

“These truckers are fighting back against the nonsense and tyranny, especially coming from the Canadian government,” wrote Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who served briefly as former President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.

A few days later, Flynn urged people to donate to the Canadian protesters. Earlier this week, he twice posted the message “#TrudeauTheCoward” on Telegram, referring to the prime minister who leads Canada’s Liberal Party.

Fox News hosts regularly laud the protests, and Trump weighed in with a broadside at Trudeau, calling him a “far left lunatic” who has “destroyed Canada with insane COVID mandates.” Cruz called the truckers “heroes” and “patriots,” and Greene said she cannot wait to see a convoy protest in Washington.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he hopes truckers come to America and “clog up cities” in an interview last week with the Daily Signal, a news website of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Far-right and anti-vaccine activists, inspired by the Canadian actions, are now planning American versions of the protests against COVID-19 mandates and restrictions modeled on the Canadian demonstrations.

Source: US funds for Canada protests may sway American politics too

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Krugman: When ‘Freedom’ Means the Right to Destroy

2022/02/16 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

On Sunday the Canadian police finally cleared away anti-vaccine demonstrators who had been blocking the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, a key commercial route that normally carries more than $300 million a day in international trade. Other bridges are still closed, and part of Ottawa, the Canadian capital, is still occupied.

The diffidence of Canadian authorities in the face of these disruptions has been startling to American eyes. Also startling, although not actually surprising, has been the embrace of economic vandalism and intimidation by much of the U.S. right — especially by people who ranted against demonstrations in favor of racial justice. What we’re getting here is an object lesson in what some people really mean when they talk about “law and order.”

Let’s talk about what has been happening in Canada and why I call it vandalism.

The “Freedom Convoy” has been marketed as a backlash by truckers angry about Covid-19 vaccination mandates. In reality, there don’t seem to have been many truckers among the protesters at the bridge (about 90 percent of Canadian truckers are vaccinated). Last week a Bloomberg reporter saw only three semis among the vehicles blocking the Ambassador Bridge, which were mainly pickup trucks and private cars; photos taken Saturday also show very few commercial trucks.

The Teamsters union, which represents many truckers on both sides of the border, has denounced the blockade.

So this isn’t a grass-roots trucker uprising. It’s more like a slow-motion Jan. 6, a disruption caused by a relatively small number of activists, many of them right-wing extremists. At their peak, the demonstrations in Ottawa reportedly involved only around 8,000 people, while numbers at other locations have been much smaller.

Despite their lack of numbers, however, the protesters have been inflicting a remarkable amount of economic damage. The U.S. and Canadian economies are very closely integrated. In particular, North American manufacturing, especially but not only in the auto industry, relies on a constant flow of parts between factories on both sides of the border. As a result, the disruption of that flow has hobbled industry, forcing production cuts and even factory shutdowns.

The closure of the Ambassador Bridge also imposed large indirect costs, as trucks were diverted to roundabout routes and forced to wait in long lines at alternative bridges.

Any attempt to put a number on the economic costs of the blockade is tricky and speculative. However, it’s not hard to come up with numbers like $300 million or more per day; combine that with the disruption of Ottawa, and the “trucker” protests may already have inflicted a couple of billion dollars in economic damage.

That’s an interesting number, because it’s roughly comparable to insurance industry estimates of total losses associated with the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the killing of George Floyd — protests that seem to have involved more than 15 million people.

This comparison will no doubt surprise those who get their news from right-wing media, which portrayed B.L.M. as an orgy of arson and looting. I still receive mail from people who believe that much of New York City was reduced to smoking rubble. In fact, the demonstrations were remarkably nonviolent; vandalism happened in a few cases, but it was relatively rare, and the damage was small considering the huge size of the protests.

By contrast, causing economic damage was and is what the Canadian protests are all about — because blocking essential flows of goods, threatening people’s livelihoods, is every bit as destructive as smashing a store window. And unlike, say, a strike aimed at a particular company, this damage fell indiscriminately on anyone who had the misfortune to rely on unobstructed trade.

And to what end? The B.L.M. demonstrations were a reaction to police killings of innocent people; what’s going on in Canada is, on its face, about rejecting public health measures intended to save lives. Of course, even that is mainly an excuse: What it’s really about is an attempt to exploit pandemic weariness to boost the usual culture-war agenda.

As you might expect, the U.S. right is loving it. People who portrayed peaceful protests against police killings as an existential threat are delighted by the spectacle of right-wing activists breaking the law and destroying wealth. Fox News has devoted many hours to fawning coverage of the blockades and occupations. Senator Rand Paul, who called B.L.M. activists a “crazed mob,” called for Canada-style protests to “clog up cities” in the United States, specifically saying that he hoped to see truckers disrupt the Super Bowl (they didn’t).

I assume that the reopening of the Ambassador Bridge is the beginning of a broader crackdown on destructive protests. But I hope we won’t forget this moment — and in particular that we remember it the next time a politician or media figure talks about “law and order.”

Recent events have confirmed what many suspected: The right is perfectly fine, indeed enthusiastic, about illegal actions and disorder as long as they serve right-wing ends.

Source: When ‘Freedom’ Means the Right to Destroy

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The Quiet Flight of Muslims From France

2022/02/15 Leave a comment

Of interest. Haven’t found any comparable data for Canada but will check the 2021 census data when it comes out (which will have religious affiliation data):

France’s wounded psyche is the invisible character in every one of Sabri Louatah’s novels and the hit television series he wrote. He speaks of his “sensual, physical, visceral love” for the French language and of his attachment to his hometown in southeastern France, bathed in its distinctive light. He closely monitors the campaign for the upcoming presidential elections.

But Mr. Louatah does all of that from Philadelphia, the city that he began considering home after the 2015 attacks in France by Islamist extremists, which killed scores of people and deeply traumatized the country. As sentiments hardened against all French Muslims, he no longer felt safe there. One day, he was spat on and called, “Dirty Arab.”

“It’s really the 2015 attacks that made me leave because I understood they were not going to forgive us,” said Mr. Louatah, 38, the grandson of Muslim immigrants from Algeria. “When you live in a big Democratic city on the East Coast, you’re more at peace than in Paris, where you’re deep in the cauldron.”

Ahead of elections in April, President Emmanuel Macron’s top three rivals — who are expected to account for nearly 50 percent of the vote, according to polls — are all running anti-immigrant campaigns that fan fears of a nation facing a civilizational threat by invading non-Europeans. The issue is top of their agenda, even though France’s actual immigration lags behind that of most other European countries.

The problem barely discussed is emigration. For years, France has lost highly educated professionals seeking greater dynamism and opportunity elsewhere. But among them, according to academic researchers, is a growing number of French Muslims who say that discrimination was a strong push factor and that they felt compelled to leave by a glass ceiling of prejudice, nagging questions about their security and a feeling of not belonging.

The outflow has gone unremarked upon by politicians and the news media even as researchers say it shows France’s failure to provide a path for advancement for even the most successful of its largest minority group, a “brain drain” of those who could have served as models of integration.

“These people end up contributing to the economy of Canada or Britain,” said Olivier Esteves, a professor at the University of Lille’s center on political science, public law and sociology, which surveyed 900 French Muslim émigrés and conducted in-depth interviews with 130 of them. “France is really shooting itself in the foot.”

French Muslims, estimated at 10 percent of the population, occupy a strangely outsize place in the campaign — even if their actual voices are seldom heard. It is not only an indication of the lingering wounds inflicted by the attacks of 2015 and 2016, which killed hundreds, but also of France’s long struggle over identity issues and its unresolved relationship with its former colonies.

Source: The Quiet Flight of Muslims From France

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

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