U.S. accounts drive Canadian convoy protest chatter

2022/02/15 Leave a comment

Of note. While recent concerns have understandably focussed on Chinese and Russian government interference, we likely need to spend more attention on the threats from next door, along with the pernicious threats via Facebook and Twitter:

Known U.S.-based sources of misleading information have driven a majority of Facebook and Twitter posts about the Canadian COVID-19 vaccine mandate protest, per German Marshall Fund data shared exclusively with Axios.

Driving the news: Ottawa’s “Freedom Convoy” has ballooned into a disruptive political protest against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and inspired support among right-wing and anti-vaccine mandate groups in the U.S.

Why it matters: Trending stories about the protest appear to be driven by a small number of voices as top-performing accounts with huge followings are using the protest to drive engagement and inflame emotions with another hot-button issue.

  • “They can flood the zone — making something news and distorting what appears to be popular,” said Karen Kornbluh, senior fellow and director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund. 

What they’re saying: “The three pages receiving the most interactions on [convoy protest] posts — Ben Shapiro, Newsmax and Breitbart -—are American,” Kornbluh said. Other pages with the most action on convoy-related posts include Fox News, Dan Bongino and Franklin Graham.

  • “These major online voices with their bullhorns determine what the algorithm promotes because the algorithm senses it is engaging,” she said.
  • Using a platform’s design to orchestrate anti-government action mirrors how the “Stop the Steal” groups worked around the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, with a few users quickly racking up massive followings, Kornbluh said.

By the numbers: Per German Marshall Fund data, from Jan. 22, when the protests began, to Feb. 12, there were 14,667 posts on Facebook pages about the Canadian protests, getting 19.3 million interactions (including likes, comments and shares).

  • For context: The Beijing Olympics had 20.9 million interactions in that same time period.
  • On Twitter, from Feb. 3 to Feb. 13, tweets about the protests from have been favorited at least 4.1 million times and retweeted at least 1.1 million times.
  • Pro-convoy videos on YouTube have racked up 47 million views, with Fox News’ YouTube page getting 29.6 million views on related videos.

The big picture: New research published in the Atlantic finds that most public activity on Facebook comes from a “tiny, hyperactive group of abusive users.”

  • Since user engagement remains the most important factor in Facebook’s weighting of content recommendations, the researchers write, the most abusive users will wield the most influence over the online conversation.
  • “Overall, we observed 52 million users active on these U.S. pages and public groups, less than a quarter of Facebook’s claimed user base in the country,” the researchers write. “Among this publicly active minority of users, the top 1 percent of accounts were responsible for 35 percent of all observed interactions; the top 3 percent were responsible for 52 percent. Many users, it seems, rarely, if ever, interact with public groups or pages.”

Meanwhile, Foreign meddling is further confusing the narrative around the trucker protest. 

  • NBC News reported that overseas content mills in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Romania and other countries are powering Facebook groups promoting American versions of the trucker convoys. Facebook took many of the pages down.
  • A report from Grid News found a Bangladeshi digital marketing firm was behind two of the largest Facebook groups related to the Canadian Freedom Convoy beforebeing removed from the platform.
  • Grid News reported earlier that Facebook groups supporting the Canadian convoy were being administered by a hacked Facebook account belonging to a Missouri woman.

Source: U.S. accounts drive Canadian convoy protest chatter

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Caste has become a university diversity issue in the US

2022/02/14 1 Comment

Hard to imagine that this also happens in Canada to some extent given the large number of South Asian students and grateful for information readers may have:

Many international students from disadvantaged groups hope to leave the entrenched social structures and caste discrimination behind and start afresh as they come to the United States or elsewhere. 

But to their consternation and horror, some South Asian students have found that caste discrimination is alive and well overseas, particularly where there is a large South Asia diaspora or foreign students on campus.

Mounting evidence of such discriminatory treatment and harassment led the California State University (CSU) system to add caste to its list of protected groups in January, prohibiting caste-based discrimination, harassment or retaliation. Other universities in the US are examining whether they should do the same. 

The CSU system, with some 485,000 students and about 56,000 faculty and staff, is sending a signal out to the rest of the university sector that caste discrimination exists and that affected students and staff require protection, say inclusivity activists who have campaigned for years to include caste-oppressed students and faculty. They have called the CSU decision an important civil rights win. 

“This is very important because we can now feel safer,” said Prem Pariyar, who recently graduated from CSU’s East Bay campus with a masters degree in social work. He began the campaign for caste protection at East Bay and helped extend it across CSU’s 23 campuses. 

“At least now the university has a policy to recognise our pain and to recognise our issues,” he told University World News. “In the US people are conscious about race and religion and the like but they did not know about caste discrimination.”

“Being a protected category is important as it means people like me [and] other students will feel more comfortable to go and complain. Before adding caste as a protected category, even if students reported to the administration, they would not understand what it is. It is not racial discrimination, but it is the same logic.”

Michael Uhlenkamp, senior director of public affairs in the CSU Chancellors Office, said: “While caste protections were inherently included in previous CSU non-discrimination policies, the decision to specifically name caste in the interim policy reflects the CSU’s commitment to inclusivity and respect, making certain each and every one of our 23 CSU campuses is a place of access, opportunity and equity for all.” 

“The existing processes for reporting instances of discrimination, whether based on caste or any of the categories listed in the policy, still apply,” he added. 

‘Long overdue’

“It’s long overdue. This was a campaign that we were working on for almost two and a half years,” said Thenmozhi Soundararajan, executive director of Equality Labs, a US-based civil rights organisation fighting for the rights of Dalits, a low-caste group formerly known as ‘untouchables’.

Equality Labs has been advising institutions and companies in the US. It carried out the first survey of Dalit discrimination among the South Asian diaspora in the US in 2016. In a sample of 1,500 respondents, “the numbers are high – one in four experience some form of physical or verbal assaults, one in three face discrimination in terms of their education and two out of three face workplace discrimination,” Soundararajan told University World News.

The survey was instrumental in convincing the CSU system to include caste in their policy, along with students like Pariyar, himself a Dalit, who were willing to speak out. 

“The whole process of educating and transforming these institutions towards caste equity has been one of very powerful testimony, and storytelling by really courageous and bold caste-oppressed students and faculty and campus community members. 

“And doing so under very difficult environments where caste bigots were literally intimidating, harassing and doxing them,” said Soundararajan, who is also a visiting scholar at the Center for South Asia, Stanford University. 

Soundararajan points to various types of campus discrimination – including discrimination with housing, work or student groups “openly using caste slurs and other microaggressions as well as more serious cases of gender-based violence like harassment and assault”. 

Equality Labs has been advising a large number of universities and colleges in the US, including providing advice from legal scholars “who have already done some thinking about this – we’ve worked with many institutions, large and small on these issues”.

“In our countries of origin, while there are laws to protect against caste oppression, there is a great deal of impunity and a lack of political will to enforce them. In the United States, however, because of the struggles of black and indigenous and other communities of colour, civil rights laws still have teeth,” Soundararajan explained.

“Increasingly, American institutions that are concerned about their liability related to civil rights and human rights compliance are proactively adding caste and making it explicit,” she noted. “When it’s not explicit, all the things that come from [being] a protected category don’t exist within the campuses’ or institutions’ purview.”

But universities are also key to educating society in general. “In making caste a protected category, institutions of higher learning are positioned to take the critical issue of caste oppression and discrimination seriously and to render it visible,” said Angana Chatterji, cultural anthropologist and scholar at the University of California (UC) Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender.

“Such commitment is imperative to deepening the study of caste and generative of new knowledge formations attentive to its intersections with gender and race. And to developing support systems, curricula and interventions to dismantle caste oppression and caste privilege within the university,” she added.

Often invisible

Caste harassment can often be invisible to those outside the South Asian community, but that does not mean it does not exist outside Asia. 

“I have been experiencing caste discrimination from my childhood, but I did not imagine that caste discrimination exists in the US, but then I experienced it myself. I was discriminated against within campus and outside campus,” said Pariyar, who is from Nepal. His caste are often not allowed to sit at the same table as higher castes or share food. 

Pariyar, who arrived in the US in 2015, said other South Asians “will ask your name, what does your father do. Their intention is to know my caste identity. In the beginning the conversation is respectful, but after knowing my caste identity that respect is gone,” he said.

“This is happening in California and not just in California but elsewhere in the US,” he added, saying he was left embarrassed, humiliated and depressed by these experiences and preferred not to go to get-togethers, house parties or other parties where there were other South Asian students present. 

Others who face caste discrimination are often reluctant to speak out because, in effect, it means revealing their caste origins. Some of them drop their surname or adopt a caste-neutral surname.  

“Many people do not feel comfortable talking about this type of discrimination and they want to hide their identity because they want to be protected; they don’t want harassment from dominant-caste people,” noted Pariyar, who says he is talking to other campuses about similar protections, including the University of California system – separate from the California State University system – starting with UC Berkeley. 

“We have to take it step by step,” said Pariyar, noting the victories in the CSU system and elsewhere along the way. 

The wording varies in different institutions. Brandeis University added this category in December 2019 that says caste is a recognised and protected characteristic in the school’s anti-discrimination policy. In September 2021, UC Davis added ‘caste or perceived caste’ as a category to its anti-discrimination policy. 

Colby College of Maine revised its non-discrimination policy to add caste to its list of ‘protections for the campus community’. In December 2021 Harvard, the first Ivy League university to do so, “added protections for caste-oppressed students” to its graduate student union contract.

Before CSU included it more broadly, some student and faculty organisations passed resolutions last year calling on the university to add caste to its anti-discrimination policy. These include the California Faculty Association, a CSU labour union, as part of their collective bargaining agreement, and Cal State Student Association, a non-profit representing students across the university, in April 2021.

“The student resolutions really matter because when the voice of the students from all 22 campuses say ‘we need this’, it’s huge. So that began the engagement with the [CSU] Chancellor’s office, and they have their own legal team. So they’re confident about the choices,” said Soundararajan. “But we also connected them with top legal scholars on caste in the United States.”

Periyar says it was an uphill battle. When the CSU-wide resolution came up, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), a Hindu lobby group, vehemently opposed it. Its website includes a comment by Sunil Kumar, professor of engineering at San Diego State University. 

Rather than redressing discrimination, “it will actually cause discrimination by unconstitutionally singling out and targeting Hindu faculty of Indian and South Asian descent as members of a suspect class because of deeply entrenched, false stereotypes about Indians, Hindus and caste,” he said. 

HAF had been virtually silent until then, perhaps not understanding the significance of student and faculty resolutions. But Pariyar counters: “This policy is not dividing. It is a policy of inclusion. There are marginalised students and they need to be included.”

Berkeley’s Chatterji said: “Hindu nationalist organisations in the diaspora have repeatedly attempted to silence conversations around caste oppression, gender and Islamophobia. If systems of higher education in California determine to make caste a protected category, it will have an impact not just on California, but nationally.”

A ‘caste curriculum’

Becoming more inclusive is also important in the context of broadening diversity of incoming international students. 

“It is already a topic of conversation on campuses on how to diversity the pool of international students, [to know] what are the systemic forms of discrimination that exist over time and how can US institutions make sure they are reaching a broader diversity of South Asian students,” said international education consultant Rajika Bhandari. 

“On-the-ground understanding is definitely required, because if policies are not shaped by individuals who deeply understand the context, it can fall into a kind of neocolonialist framework or a very Americanised view of another countries’ social issues,” she said. 

Social stratification by caste, prevalent in India for centuries, has variations by region and community, even within India and its neighbouring countries, as well as further afield in South Africa, East Africa and Southeast Asia – particularly in Singapore and Malaysia, the Caribbean and elsewhere with communities from South Asia, often since British colonial times. Its complexity is difficult to explain to others. 

Pariyar agrees universities will need to understand caste better in order to be truly inclusive. 

“Adding caste is not enough, application is very important,” he said. “We need a caste equity action plan”. 

“We need training and a curriculum. We need to train all the diversity and inclusion committee members, all the faculty within the CSU system about the gravity of caste discrimination, what it is and how it exists. There is visible discrimination and invisible discrimination and they need to understand that,” Pariyar said, adding that the university system needs to hire experts to train staff and faculty.  

Some of this expertise is provided by Equality Labs which says it helps institutions develop better tools and know the process of how to identify discriminatory behaviour on the basis of caste.

“Institutions need to create real metrics – enrolment metrics, application metrics – to get a sense of what the baseline of crimes or incidents are, then to be able to bring it down. Data is the key – if we don’t begin with a set of really strong KPIs [key performance indicators], we can’t measure progress,” said Soundararajan.

Source: Caste has become a university diversity issue in the US

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‘They’re Authoritarians, Dammit!’ Art Spiegelman On the School Board That Cancelled ‘Maus’

2022/02/14 Leave a comment

Worth noting:

In the four decades since Art Spiegelman began Maus, the graphic novel has sold millions of copies, won a Pulitzer Prize, and secured a place in the Western canon. The book communicates the history of the Holocaust through the history of his family— Polish Jews, who are rendered as mice, sent to death camps by Nazis, who are rendered as cats. Maus is taught in thousands of schools, including, until recently, to eighth-graders in Tennessee’s McMinn County, where the local school board voted 10-0 on Jan. 10 to remove it from the middle school curriculum. With predictable results.

Already alert to a flurry of previous efforts to remove titles deemed inappropriate by state and local politicians—including a Texas state lawmaker’s demand that every school district “investigate” some 850 books dealing with race or sexuality—liberals smelled a rat. Public school curriculums feature prominently in the culture wars that many Republicans are hoping to ride to electoral victory. Progressives may argue for an unvarnished instruction of U.S. history, but in Maus, one member of the McMinn County school board found “it looks like the entire curriculum is developed to normalize sexuality, normalize nudity and normalize vulgar language. If I was trying to indoctrinate somebody’s kids, this is how I would do it.”

“Who’s the snowflake now?” Spiegelman shot back in one interview.

The cartoonist, who turns 74 on Feb. 15, spoke to TIME the morning after headlining a webinar that had attracted an audience of 17,000 before crashing the Facebook page of the Jewish Federation of Greater Chattanooga, which had hosted the conversation along with an array of Tennessee clergy, rabbis, and local activists Spiegelman found so enlightened and reasonable he said he might “have to jettison my caricatured notion of them all as Lil’ Abner-style hillbillies.”

TIME: How much are we dealing with caricatures here?
Art Spiegelman: Well, we’re dealing with everything from vile, racist and antisemitic caricatures to caricatures of what children are. And on the other end of the spectrum, maybe caricatures the way Walt Kelly and Herb Blockapplied them.

Have you ever been to eastern Tennessee?
Never.

You read the minutes of the meeting?
Yes I did. Several times.

What do you think is actually going on?
That’s what left me so filled with flop sweat before the conversation last night, because I kept veering back and forth. Am I just a total Pollyanna naive idiot? Or are these people really idiots? Or are they actually sinister forces that have gathered to, like, kill America for their own profit? Or what are they? I don’t know to what degree they’re genuinely out to destroy America and to what degree they’re actually just like I the metaphor I used last night: If you saw somebody like a psycho killer, strangling a loved one of yours, and you couldn’t reach that person to stop them. And your only response was, “God, did you see the fingernails on that creep’s hands? They’re dirty.”

Do you think it would help to meet the people?
Through bulletproof glass, yeah.

We refer to it as a ban. Is it a ban?
It’s not banned in its broadest meaning, but it is a ban of sorts to use authority to keep people from things. Yes, it’s a ban. And yet it’s not a book burning.

The board later put out a statement that their decision “does not diminish the value of Maus as an impactful and meaningful piece of literature.” Do you take them at their word?

I don’t know. That’s where I started this conversation with you. I don’t know. I don’t know. Did they rewrite their minutes to get rid of all the terrible things actually said to each other in order for us to sanitize the meeting minutes, two or three weeks later? How would I know? My guess is that what they did was the law of the land still is based on the 1982 decision that you can ban things further affect young minds and whatever but you can’t on the basis of content. So they focus on how terrible it was to see what they described as a nude woman—what I saw as the naked corpse of my mother in the bathtub having slashed her wrists in that bathtub. And to call her nude, it made me angry. Naked, which means a kind of vulnerable lack of covering, is enough to get you livid, because look, what do they want me to show, like her upside down in the bathtub? Or wearing a bathrobe splattered with blood in the bathtub? Which didn’t make any sense. They didn’t want to show it. And that was a problem.

I just can’t tell to what degree this carried water for more whacked out people than they are, the ones who really stand to profit from getting more charter schools in the area that teach religion, thereby taking money away from a public education that needs far, far more to do its job well. I don’t know. So we’ll have to see how this plays out. I don’t think I’ve changed and hearts and minds. What this thing last night did show is that caricatures aren’t the way through unless you really know how to use them. It’s like these people that I met last night are wonderful … talking about building bridges rather than blowing bridges up.

Some of the people in the webinar appeared quite pleased. Was that because they have a battle that has been joined?
Yeah. They’re fighting not to burn the book burners or whatever, but really trying to make some kind of bridge—although I think it might be a bridge too far—it’s such an admirable thing to do. They’re better people than I am. I tried to rise to the occasion. But the caricature thing is: caricatures can be used be used to subvert themselves, you know, like the caricature of reducing Nazis and Jews to Cats and Mice. But by showing the caricatures as masks with humans underneath it, and pointing to that more and more as the book goes on, dissolves whatever their caricature is by creating a kind of self-destructing metaphor. But you’re play with dynamite when you’re playing with caricature.

It’s such a personal book. Is the offense personal?

Yes. Because when they’re really most focused on me yelling at my father when he destroyed my mother’s diary and finally confessed to it. I say something like “God damn you, murderer, you murdered her a second time!” The memories that she had managed to preserve for me, because what she said when she was young ,when she died, reoccur, and were destroyed so my cursing is there. And I’m cursing at my mother. I’m calling her a bitch, in the confusion of finding out that my mother had just died that day by killing herself. And there’s a a turmoil, there’s a turmoil of remembering my early childhood, of what the reasons might be, ranging from premenopausal depression to life in the camps damaging her so badly.

That I felt was a little place they had really focused. But why? Because I believe, they were upset that I was breaking the commandment to honor thy father and mother. And that was usurping their authority. They’re all parents. They don’t want their kids talking to them like that, thank you. Authority is what they like the most. They’re authoritarians, dammit.

The board’s attorney said the book could be salvaged if the author approved “extensive edits,” like whiting out “bitch.” Maybe we should just put in “blintz” or “bagel.” Make for a more wholesome Jewish cultural experience.

You have a long history with censorship, right? The Comics Code?
The Comics Code is what made me. Yes, the burning of comic books literally in the 40s and 50s by teachers, clergyman, parents. There were several bonfires across the country. I have a photo of one in Binghamton, N.Y., where I was in college till I got kicked out. That was an important moment because comics had been perceived as being for children, although adults—certainly, GIs, and young women who read true romance magazines were reading romance comics—were probably reading them more than children. But it was focused on the same thing these school board people focused, on we have to protect the children as opposed to educate them, and not let them actually follow their fantasies.

But those comic books that they were burning were pretty far out there and getting more far out as they lead into the more adult audience. You know, the horror comics and some of the very lurid images in many of those comics more and more were among the comics I love the most, because they were kind of on the edge of the forbidden, because they were showing me things to their most exaggerated. And I love those comics, the horror comics. And mainly the horror comics companion from the same publisher:MAD. If there was one of these Citizen Kane biographies about me, like the rosebud at the end would be a copy of MAD comics.

This controversy has boosted sales, hasn’t it?
I think enormously. I haven’t seen it yet. But you know the cynical side of this is like: “Oh man you just got to get your book banned, it’ll really do wonders.” I can envision a future in which there are book galleys going out to people saying publication date, April 5, ban date May 1 .

I didn’t need the uptick in sales. Maus has been really selling steadily since 1986, when the first volume came out, even more so after it won the Pulitzer Prize. I didn’t need to boost my income. It’ll give me more money to donate to things like voter registration.

But the other thing about the forbidden is that it’s it’s it’s always richer if you have to sneak it right? I had to hide MAD magazine from my mom.

As my friend oldest, closest friend, who is now dead, would say, there was a point where he had to hide MAD inside a school book, and a point where he had to hide MAD inside his copy of Playboy.

Which you’ve also worked for, as the school board noted.
Yes, they sure did note it! The roster of authors who have appeared there probably are on their banned list. They include Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Margaret Atwood, Shel Silverstein. It’s an honorable company to be in, even though I understand how Playboy hasn’t aged well in our current moment. Great one to be able to throw at me.

Source: ‘They’re Authoritarians, Dammit!’ Art Spiegelman On the School Board That Cancelled ‘Maus’

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Biden seeking professional diversity in his judicial picks

2022/02/12 Leave a comment

Significant. In contrast, my analysis of judicial appointments under the Liberal government (close to 500 appointments, 55.7 percent women, 8.5 percent visible minorities, 3.1 percent Indigenous):

President Joe Biden spent a recent flight aboard Air Force One reminiscing with lawmakers and aides about his start as a young lawyer in Delaware working as a public defender in the late 1960s.

The flight from New York to Washington was short, and there wasn’t much time to explore the president’s brief time in the job during the civil rights era. But as Biden considers his first Supreme Court nominee, this lesser-known period in his biography could offer insight into the personal experience he brings to the decision. The account was relayed by a person familiar with the trip who insisted on anonymity to discuss it.

Biden has already made history by nominating more public defenders, civil rights attorneys and nonprofit lawyers to the federal bench during his first year in office than any other president, increasing not just the racial and gender diversity of the federal judiciary but also the range of professional expertise. And it’s possible that theme will continue as he looks to make more history by nominating the first Black woman to the nation’s highest court.

While three of the current justices have experience as prosecutors, none was a criminal defense attorney. The last justice with serious experience in defense was Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights attorney nominated about 55 years ago. He was the first Black person on the court and retired in 1991.

Some of the women on Biden’s list of potential nominees have deep public defense or civil rights backgrounds: Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, for example, worked as a public defender and served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission before she was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama. Eunice Lee, 51, whom Biden named to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in August, is the first former federal defender to serve on that court.

Biden’s judicial appointments thus far make clear his interest in professional diversity.

Nearly 30% of Biden’s nominees to the federal bench have been public defenders, 24% have been civil rights lawyers and 8% labor attorneys. By the end of his first year, Biden had won confirmation of 40 judges, the most since President Ronald Reagan. Of those, 80% are women and 53% are people of color, according to the White House.

“It’s so important to have a diversity of perspectives and having the judiciary really reflect the diversity of lived experiences and perspectives of the folks who are coming before them,” said Lisa Cylar Barrett, director of policy at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund.

The Supreme Court hears only a fraction of federal cases filed each year. Federal judges are hearing most of the cases, with roughly 400,000 cases filed in federal trial courts a year. The high court hears only about 150 of the more than 7,000 cases it is asked to review annually.

Most of the judges appointed to the federal bench have worked as prosecutors, corporate attorneys or both. A survey three years ago found more than 73% of sitting federal judges were men, and more than 80% were white, according to the Center for American Progress.

A diversity of professional expertise makes for a more fair and just bench, advocates say. Judges draw on their personal histories to help them weigh arguments and decide cases, and they also learn from each other. Public defenders often represent the indigent and the marginalized, those who often can’t afford their own attorneys.

“They represent the 80% percent of people in the criminal legal system too low-income to afford a lawyer,” said Emily Galvin-Almanza, a former public defender who founded the nonprofit Partners for Justice. “So when you put a public defender on the bench, you’re putting a person on who listens with a very different ear. You have a person on the bench with an experience of the realities of very, very disempowered people.”

Biden’s brief time as a public defender isn’t widely discussed, and it isn’t listed in his official biography on the White House website. He’s more prone to talk about his 36 years as a senator and his time as head of the Judiciary Committee, where he oversaw six Supreme Court nominations.

But the president has spoken at times about his brief time as a public defender before he became a U.S. senator at the age of 29. It’s informed some of his decisions in office, like directing federal grant money for public defense and expanding other federal efforts on public defense.

“Civil rights, the Vietnam War and President Nixon’s rampant abuse of power were the reasons I entered public life to begin with,” Biden said in a 2019 speech in South Carolina during the presidential campaign. “That’s why I had chosen at that time to leave a prestigious law firm that I had been hired by and become a public defender — because those people who needed the most help couldn’t afford to be defended in those days.”

In a 2007 memoir, he called the job “God’s work.”

The president promised during his campaign for president that he’d nominate a Black woman to the bench, and he spent his first year in office broadening his potential applicant pool through judicial appointments. Most Supreme Court justices have come from federal appeals courts, but it’s not a requirement. Among the current justices, only Justice Elena Kagan wasn’t a federal appeals court judge before joining.

Federal judges are often chosen from state courts, which also lack in diversity. But Biden’s very public push to diversify federal judges could have an impact on how judges in the states look, too.

“Neither state courts nor federal courts reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, or the diversity of the legal profession. Courts across the country are falling short,” said Alicia Bannon, the director of the Judiciary Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “But we’re hoping that is slowly changing.”

Biden has promised a rigorous selection process for his Supreme Court nominee. His team, led by former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, is reviewing past writings, public remarks and decisions, learning the life stories of the candidates and interviewing them and people who know them. Background checks will be updated and candidates may be asked about their health. After all, it’s a lifetime appointment.

The goal is to provide the president with the utmost confidence in the eventual pick’s judicial philosophy, fitness for the court and preparation for the high-stakes confirmation fight. Interviewing potential candidates comes later, but Biden has already spoken to some of the women who may be under consideration back when they were being appointed to other courts.

Biden will also continue to seek the advice of lawmakers. He was to host Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats on Thursday, a White House official said.

Source: Biden seeking professional diversity in his judicial picks

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Amid Slowdown, Immigration Is Driving U.S. Population Growth

2022/02/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

Overall, 2021 will go down as the year with the slowest population growth in U.S. history.

New census data shows why: Both components of growth — gains from immigration, and the number of births in excess of the number of deaths — have fallen sharply in recent years. In 2021, the rate of population growth fell to an unprecedented 0.1 percent.

Yet within these sluggish figures a new pattern is emerging. Immigration, even at reduced levels, is for the first time making up a majority of population growth.

In part this is because Americans are dying at higher rates and having fewer babies, trends accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. But it’s also because there are signs that immigration is picking up again.

Even after four years of stringent controls on immigration imposed under former President Donald J. Trump, the overall share of Americans born in other countries is not only rising, but coming close to levels last seen in the late 19th century.

The numbers are not nearly what they once were. The latest report, from the Census Bureau’s population estimates program, showed a net gain of 244,000 new residents from immigration in 2021 — a far cry from the middle of the previous decade, when the bureau regularly attributed annual gains of one million or more to immigration.

Yet that drop-off pales in comparison to the slowdown in what demographers call “natural increase,” the excess of births over deaths. In 2021, that figure was 148,000, or one-tenth the gain that was normal a decade ago, and smaller than international migration for the first time ever.

As of December, immigrants represented 14.1 percent of the U.S. population, matching the peak of the decades-long immigration boom that began in the 1960s and approaching the record 14.8 percent seen in 1890, shortly before large numbers of Europeans began disembarking from vessels at Ellis Island.

The foreign-born population is increasingly concentrated among middle-age groups, with a large number of immigrants having lived in the United States for many years. About 1 in 5 Americans between the ages of 40 and 64 was born overseas. And two-thirds of foreign-born residents have been in the country more than a decade, the census data shows.

In that respect, the country’s demographics reflect the long-term effects of the huge levels of immigration it experienced during the 1970s and 1980s.

“We get so used to being around people who have been here for decades and navigate American society seamlessly that we almost forget they’re immigrants,” said Tomás Jiménez, a Stanford professor who researches immigration and assimilation.

The recent slowdown in immigration was an apparent result not only of the tougher immigration policies, but also measures taken in response to the Covid-19 health crisis. In the early months of 2020, the government sealed the borders with Mexico and Canada and limited international entries by air. The closure of U.S. consular offices around the globe derailed visa processing.

But the data suggests that tougher restrictions on the border may not have been the biggest factor in the slowdown. Many immigrants decided to leave the country. During the first years of Mr. Trump’s administration, the number of immigrants coming into the country held steady, while the number leaving increased, figures show.

Some data suggests that the pace of immigration has picked up lately. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a surge in enforcement activity last year, and the Census Bureau’s monthly employment survey also detected an uptick in foreign-born respondents in late 2021.

The economic and political circumstances that compel people to leave their home countries have persisted, and demand for foreign workers of all skill levels remains brisk.

The newcomers since President Biden took office come from all over the globe, as the government has lifted the cap on refugees, welcomed thousands of families seeking asylum on the southwestern border and reopened the door to foreign workers on temporary visas.

Among them is Jeff Quetho, 28, of Haiti, who crossed the border with his 3-year-old son, hoping to build a more stable life; Param Kulkarni, 34, an Indian scientist who specializes in mental health technology and artificial intelligence, who recently settled in New York; and Feroza Darabi, 22, of Afghanistan, who arrived in Phoenix with her 13-year-old nephew, Ali.

“I am happy to be somewhere safe,” Ms. Darabi said recently during a break from an English class for refugees at Friendly House in Glendale, Az.

Ms. Darabi hopes she will be joined one day soon by family members who were unable to scramble onto the plane she and her nephew boarded out of Kabul. “What I want most now is to have my family next to me,” she said.

If immigration returns to even its relatively modest prepandemic pace, it is possible the share of Americans born overseas could reach the record 14.8 percent from 1890.

The current labor shortage has heightened calls for foreign workers, in fields as varied as restaurant service and nursing, to help fill vacancies.

“The pandemic offers a little taste of what we may be facing if demand is robust and we don’t have workers,” said Pia Orrenius, a senior economist who studies immigration at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “We will see price and wage inflation, and growth will be choked off.”

“Immigration is not going to make this problem go away, but it certainly could help,” Ms. Orrenius said.

If immigration had continued at a prepandemic pace, the economy would have two million additional foreign-born workers in occupations such as manual labor and computer science, according to a recent study by economists at the University of California, Davis.

While the pandemic is seen as contributing to the slowdown in new immigration, it may have also helped prop up the number of foreign-born residents since that number depends not just on how many immigrants arrive but also how many leave. Virus travel restrictions made it harder for immigrants to enter the United States, but they also made it less likely they would depart, said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Research Center.

“During the pandemic, you couldn’t leave the country basically,” he said.

Some of the growth in the foreign-born population is related to a surge of migrants at the southwestern border that has been going on, to varying degrees, since 2014. But it is almost impossible to know the full extent. Not only is there no reliable accounting of how many people are entering the country illegally, it is not clear how many of them are being quickly expelled.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/zFsnv/9/

The decline in birthrate that has resulted in foreign-born people becoming an ever-larger share of the population is part of a worldwide demographic pattern. Historically, nations see a drop in birthrates as they become more prosperous, a trend that can undermine that prosperity.

When low fertility is coupled with low mortality, the result is a bulging population of seniors and relatively fewer workers to sustain them, a scenario faced by Japan and many European countries that then saw their economies shrink.

The movement of the baby boom generation out of the labor force amid a plummeting birthrate has put into sharper relief the need to reverse the decline in new immigration. This will be crucial, analysts say, despite the large numbers of immigrants already living in the country — soon those here legally will be drawing more from Social Security and Medicare.

The immigrants already here may provide part of the solution. Foreign-born residents typically account for a disproportionate share of all births because recent immigrant women are more likely than others to be in their prime childbearing years and to have more children.

Lower immigration from Mexico, traditionally the biggest source of new immigrants, has contributed to falling U.S. birthrates overall.

But it will take bold political moves to harness the economic benefits of the existing foreign-born population. Already, an estimated 11 million of them are undocumented, meaning they can work only as part of the underground economy. Mr. Biden took office with a pledge to legalize them but has failed to win bipartisan support for such a move in Congress.

He took steps to jump-start legal immigration, rescinding a proclamation by his predecessor banning the entry of foreigners on work visas.

Last month, his administration unveiled policies to attract international students and to extend the time that foreign graduates in science and technical fields can remain in the country to work, from one year to three years.

In December, the government announced that 20,000 seasonal guest worker visas would be added to the allotment of 33,000 for the winter to assist employers in landscaping, construction and hospitality, desperately in need of workers.

Yet Mr. Biden’s Republican opponents have consistently resisted large increases in new immigration, and the question of how the country moves forward is likely to be debated as campaigning picks up steam for this year’s congressional elections.

Source: Amid Slowdown, Immigration Is Driving U.S. Population Growth

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How America’s talent wars are reshaping business

2022/02/05 Leave a comment

In Canada, by contrast, immigration is relied upon to meet labour force requirements. One of the consequences, unforeseen or not, was reduced pressure to improve productivity and innovation:

Dcl logistics, like so many American firms, had a problem last year. Its business, fulfilling orders of goods sold online, faced surging demand. But competition for warehouse workers was fierce, wages were rising and staff turnover was high. So dcl made two changes. It bought robots to pick items off shelves and place them in boxes. And it reduced its reliance on part-time workers by hiring more full-time staff. “What we save in having temp employees, we lose in productivity,” explains Dave Tu, dcl’s president. Full-time payroll has doubled in the past year, to 280.Listen to this story

As American companies enter another year of uncertainty, the workforce has become bosses’ principal concern. Chief executives cite worker shortages as the greatest threat to their businesses in 2022, according to a survey by the Conference Board, a research organisation. On January 28th the Labour Department reported that firms had spent 4% more on wages and benefits in the fourth quarter, year on year, a rise not seen in 20 years. Paycheques of everyone from McDonald’s burger-flippers to Citi group bankers are growing fatter. This goes some way to explaining why profit margins in the s&p 500 index of large companies, which have defied gravity in the pandemic, are starting to decline. On February 2nd Meta spooked investors by reporting a dip in profits, due in part to a rise in employee-related costs as it moves from Facebook and its sister social networks into the virtual-reality metaverse.

At the same time, firms of all sizes and sectors are testing new ways to recruit, train and deploy staff. Some of these strategies will be temporary. Others may reshape American business.

The current jobs market looks extra ordinary by historical standards. December saw 10.9m job openings, up by more than 60% from December 2019. Just six workers were available for every ten open jobs (see chart 1). Predictably, many seem comfortable abandoning old positions to seek better ones. This is evident among those who clean bedsheets and stock shelves, as well as those building spreadsheets and selling stocks. In November 4.5m workers quit their jobs, a record. Even if rising wages and an ebbing pandemic lure some of them back to work, the fight for staff may endure.

For decades American firms slurped from a deepening pool of labour, as more women entered the workforce and globalisation greatly expanded the ranks of potential hires. That expansion has now mostly run its course, says Andrew Schwedel of Bain, a consultancy. Simultaneously, other trends have conspired to make the labour pool shallower than it might have been. Men continue to slump out of the job market: the share of men aged 25 to 54 either working or looking for work was 88% at the end of last year, down from 97% in the 1950s. Immigration, which plunged during Donald Trump’s nativist presidency, has sunk further, to less than a quarter of the level in 2016. And covid-19 may have prompted more than 2.4m baby boomers into early retirement, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis.

These trends will not reverse quickly. Boomers won’t sprint back to work en masse. With Republicans hostile to outsiders and Democrats squabbling over visas for skilled ones, a surge in immigration looks unlikely. Some men have returned to the workforce since the depths of the covid recession in 2020, but the male participation rate has plateaued below pre-pandemic levels. A tight labour market may persist.

But base pay is rising, too. Bank of America says it will raise its minimum wage to $25 by 2025. In September Walmart, America’s largest private employer, set its minimum wage at $12 an hour, below many states’ requirement of $13-14 but well above the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Amazon has lifted average wages in its warehouses to $18. The average hourly wage for production and nonsupervisory employees in December was 5.8% above the level a year earlier; compared with a 4.7% jump for all private-sector workers. Firms face pressure to lift them higher still. High inflation ensured that only workers in leisure and hospitality saw a real increase in hourly pay last year (see chart 2).

Raising compensation may not, on its own, be sufficient for companies to overcome the labour squeeze, however. This is where the other strategies come in, starting with changes to recruitment. To deal with the fact that, for some types of job, there simply are not enough qualified candidates to fill vacancies, many businesses are loosening hiring criteria previously deemed a prerequisite.

The share of job postings that list “no experience required” more than doubled from January 2020 to September 2021, reckons Burning Glass, an analytics firm. Easing rigid preconditions may be sensible, even without a labour shortage. A four-year degree, argues Joseph Fuller of Harvard Business School, is an unreliable guarantor of a worker’s worth. The Business Roundtable and the us Chamber of Commerce, two business groups, have urged companies to ease requirements that job applicants have a four-year university degree, advising them to value workers’ skills instead.

Another way to deal with a shortage of qualified staff is for firms to impart the qualifications themselves. In September, the most recent month for which Burning Glass has data, the share of job postings that offer training was more than 30% higher than in January 2020. New providers of training are proliferating, from university-run “bootcamps” to short-term programmes by specialists such as General Assembly and big employers themselves. Employers in Buffalo have hired General Assembly to run data-training schemes for local workers who are broadly able but who lack specific tech skills. Google, a technology giant, says it will consider workers who earn its online certificate in data analytics, for example, to be equivalent to a worker with a four-year degree.

Besides revamping recruitment and training, companies are modifying how their workers work. Some positions are objectively bad, with low pay, unpredictable scheduling and little opportunity for growth. Zeynep Ton of the mit Sloan School of Management contends that making low-wage jobs more appealing improves retention and productivity, which supports profits in the long term. As interesting as Walmart’s pay increases, she argues, are the retail behemoth’s management changes. Last year it said that two-thirds of the more than 565,000 hourly workers in its stores would work full time, up from about half in 2016. They would have predictable schedules week to week and more structured mentorship. Other companies may take note. Many of the complaints raised by labour organisers at Starbucks and Amazon have as much to do with safety and stress on the job as they do wages or benefits.

Companies that cannot find enough workers are trying to do with fewer of them. Sometimes that means trimming services. Many hotel chains, including Hilton, have made daily housekeeping optional. “We’ve been very thoughtful and cautious about what positions we fill,” Darren Woods, boss of ExxonMobil, told the oil giant’s investors on February 1st.

Increasingly, this also involves investments in automation. Orders of robots last year surpassed the pre-pandemic high in both volume and value, according to the Association for Advancing Automation. ups, a shipping firm, is boosting productivity with more automated bagging and labelling; new electronic tags will eliminate millions of manual scans each day.

New business models are pushing things along. Consider McEntire Produce in Columbia, South Carolina. Each year more than 45,000 tonnes of sliced lettuce, tomatoes and onions move through its factory. Workers pack them in bags, place bags in boxes and stack boxes on pallets destined for fast-food restaurants. McEntire has raised wages, but staff turnover remains high. Even as worker costs have climbed, the upfront expense of automation has sunk. So the firm plans to install new robots to box and stack. It will lease these from a new company called Formic, which offers robots at an hourly rate that is less than half the cost of a McEntire worker doing the same job. By 2025 McEntire wants to automate 60% of its volume, with robots handling the back-breaking work and workers performing tasks that require more skill. One new position, introduced in the past year, looks permanent: a manager whose sole job is to listen to and support staff so they do not quit. 

Both workers and employers are adapting. For the most part, they are doing so outside the construct of collective bargaining. Despite a flurry of activity—Starbucks baristas in Buffalo and Amazon workers in Alabama will hold union votes in February—unions remain weak. Last year 10.3% of American workers were unionised, matching the record low of 2019. Within the private sector, the unionisation rate is just 6.1%. Strikes and pickets will be a headache for some bosses. But it is quits that could cause them sleepless nights.

Pay as they go

Companies’ most straightforward tactic to deal with worker shortages is to raise pay. If firms are to part with cash, they prefer the inducements to be one-off rather than recurring and sticky, as with higher wages. That explains a proliferation of fat bonuses. Before the Christmas rush Amazon began offering workers a $3,000 sign-on sweetener. Compensation for lawyers at America’s top 50 firms rose by 16.5% last year, in part thanks to bonuses, according to a survey by Citigroup and Hildebrandt, a consultancy. In January Bank of America said it would give staff $1bn in restricted stock, which vests over time.

Source: How America’s talent wars are reshaping business

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Immigration Critics Wrong: Fewer Visas Did Not Help U.S. Workers

2022/02/04 Leave a comment

Useful analysis of this natural experiment given US government policies remained largely unchanged:

The number of new foreign-born workers in the United States declined because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but U.S. workers were not better off, according to new research. That refutes a long-held anti-immigration argument and addresses a concern raised by some labor unions. Worker shortages, partly a result of restrictive immigration policies and made worse by the pandemic, have contributed to empty shelves in supermarkets, shorter hours in restaurants and elsewhere, and an inability for many companies to fill jobs and grow in the United States.

The research focused on H-1B visas for high-skilled foreign nationals, H-2B visas for nonagricultural seasonal workers, and J-1 visas for summer work travel. The focus is timely because some labor unions have argued against the Biden administration increasing by 20,000 the number of H-2B visas, even though such visas help reduce illegal entry and prevent at least some of the dangerous border crossings that cause hundreds of deaths annually, such as the recent drowning of a 7-year-old girl from Venezuela in the Rio Grande.

“The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a sharp drop in international migration to the United States, but there is no evidence the entry of fewer foreign workers on temporary visas improved outcomes for U.S. workers,” concluded Madeline Zavodny, an economics professor at the University of North Florida and a former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, in a new report for the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).

“The research examined labor markets where more temporary foreign workers were employed prior to the pandemic and found the drop in H-2B program admissions did not boost labor market opportunities for U.S. workers but rather, if anything, worsened them,” writes Zavodny. “The results also do not indicate gains for similar U.S. workers in labor markets that had relied more on the H-1B and J-1 visa programs. There is no evidence of improved labor market opportunities for U.S. workers in the leisure and hospitality sector during the summer months as a result of the virtual shutdown of the J-1 Summer Work Travel program.

“There is also no evidence of faster employment growth or lower unemployment rates for college graduate U.S. natives as a result of decreased admissions via the H-1B program. Instead, labor markets that had been more reliant on temporary foreign workers via the H-1B program before the pandemic appeared to have had more unfilled jobs during the pandemic. The large drop in new temporary foreign workers via the H-1B program thus does not appear to have led to better labor market outcomes for the U.S. natives who might compete with those workers for jobs.”

Among the findings of the report are new estimates that show the number of working-age migrants from abroad has declined:

·       “The U.S. received some 630,000 fewer working-age international migrants between mid-March 2020 and mid-March 2021 than at its peak during the corresponding period in 2014-2015, a drop of over 75% in inflows.

·       “Even if new arrivals in 2019-2021 had maintained just the average annual pace over 2010-2019, the U.S. would have received almost 600,000 more working-age international migrants than it actually did during that two-year period.

·       “The decrease in working-age international migrants was similar for migrants who had at least a bachelor’s degree and those who had at most a high school diploma, both down 75% in 2020-2021 from their peak year-to-year inflow during the previous decade.

·       “The number of J-1 exchange visitor visas issued plummeted from about 350,000 per fiscal year to about 100,000 in FY 2020 and a similar level in fiscal year (FY) 2021. The drop in the Summer Work Travel (SWT) program within that visa category was even more precipitous, falling from over 100,000 annually to under 5,000 in FY 2020.

·       “The number of H-1B specialty occupations visas issued fell from almost 190,000 in FY 2019 to about 125,000 in FY 2020 and under 62,000 in FY 2021.

·       “The number of H-2B non-agricultural worker visas issued fell by almost half in FY 2020 before returning to near its pre-pandemic level in FY 2021.”

Zavodny notes it is tempting to argue that some of the increase in labor market opportunities for workers is due to reduced international migration. “The analysis here gives little reason to believe any gains for U.S. workers are linked to lower admission of temporary foreign workers,” writes Zavodny. “The ongoing shortages of workers in many labor markets reflect U.S. employers’ need for additional workers from both domestic sources and abroad. The research also examines data on job postings and the results point to jobs, particularly highly skilled jobs, going unfilled when temporary foreign workers were unable to enter the country. The decrease in new temporary foreign workers in the U.S. as a result of the pandemic thus does not appear to have led to better labor market outcomes for U.S. natives but rather to jobs left unfilled.”

Immigration critics have insisted that fewer legal visas would translate into gains for U.S. workers. The Covid-19 pandemic created a natural experiment to test that proposition and found it to be untrue. The results show a simplistic, zero-sum argument that restricting the size of the labor force benefits U.S. workers is incorrect. Such an argument fails to take into account many factors, including the role played by capital and entrepreneurs in a market economy. Instead, imposing visa restrictions and having fewer available workers reduce economic growth and make it more difficult for businesses to expand and deliver products and services to Americans.

Source: Immigration Critics Wrong: Fewer Visas Did Not Help U.S. Workers

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House Adds ‘Game-Changing’ Visas For Immigrant Startups And Ph.D.s

2022/01/28 Leave a comment

Significant if it passes and a measure that will reduce some of the advantages for Canadian immigration that were generated by the Trump administration’s restrictive policies:

The House Rules Committee has added a significant element missing from a Senate innovation bill—visas for people who will produce innovations. House Democrats addressed that oversight by adding two potentially game-changing measures for immigrant entrepreneurs and immigrants with Ph.D.s in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. If these measures become law, their impact could be far-reaching. (See sections 80301 to 80305 in the bill.)

Immigrant Startup Visa: The lack of a startup visa costs America talent, according to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. In its final report, the commission members said the absence of a startup visa places the United States at a disadvantage compared to other nations like Canada in retaining and attracting foreign-born entrepreneurs. Many innovations are realized through entrepreneurship, and, according to a 2018 National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis, more than half of the billion-dollar startups in the United States had at least one immigrant founder. The list included some of America’s most innovative companies, such as SpaceX, Stripe and Moderna.

On January 25, 2022, the House Rules Committee added Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-CA) LIKE Act to the nearly 3,000-page America COMPETES Act (H.R. 4521). The bill creates a temporary visa for foreign-born entrepreneurs who qualify and, according to a summary, “Allows the founder to apply for and receive lawful permanent residence if the start-up entity meets certain additional benchmarks.”

An individual qualifies for a new temporary W visa for an initial three years if:

“(1) the alien possesses an ownership interest of not less than 10% in a start-up entity;

“(2) the alien will play a central and active role in the management or operations of the start-up entity;

“(3) the alien possesses the knowledge, skills, or experience to substantially assist the start-up entity with the growth and success of its business; and

“(4) during the 18-month period preceding the filing of the petition, the start-up entity received at least $250,000 in qualifying investments from one or more qualified investors; or at least $100,000 in qualifying government awards or grants.”

The bill allows for an extension of the W (temporary) status for an additional three years if the individual possesses at least a 5% ownership stake, will continue to play a “central and active role” in management or operations, has received at least $500,000 in “additional qualifying investments,” created “at least 5 qualified jobs” or “generated not less than $500,000 in annual revenue in the United States and averaged 20% in annual revenue growth.”

An entrepreneur in W status may adjust status to lawful permanent residence without being placed in a green card backlog (i.e., they are exempt from the numerical limit) if the individual has maintained W status, ownership interest in the startup and an active and central role in the company, and the startup has “created at least 10 qualified jobs and . . . has received not less than $1.25 million in qualifying investments . . . or generated not less than $1 million in annual revenue in the U.S. in the two-year period preceding the filing of the petition.”

The startup visa’s impact could be significant. The measure could create approximately 1 to 3 million jobs over a decade, depending on factors that include how government agencies administer the provision, according to an NFAP estimate of an earlier Lofgren startup visa bill.

“The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) is excited to see the America COMPETES Act include a startup visa,” said Jeff Farrah of NVCA. “Immigrant entrepreneurs have created some of the most iconic American companies. But our immigration laws make it too hard for foreign-born entrepreneurs to launch new, high-growth companies in the U.S. A startup visa would provide a dedicated visa category that will allow the world’s best entrepreneurs to create the next generation of great companies that will ensure the United States remains the global leader in technology and innovation.” (See a startup visa coalition letter here.)

A Green Card Exemption For Ph.D.s: Another significant provision added to the House bill would exempt from annual green card limits individuals with Ph.D.s in STEM fields. That would allow U.S. employers to gain a significant competitive edge by offering the chance at permanent residence to outstanding researchers from around the world, including those early in their careers and engaging in cutting-edge work.

Under the bill, individuals can gain permanent residence without being placed in a green card backlog (or be subject to per-country limits) if they “have earned a doctoral degree in a program of study involving science, technology, engineering, or mathematics—from a qualified United States research institution; or from a foreign institution if such degree is the equivalent to a degree issued by a qualified United States research institution; and are seeking admission to engage in work in the United States in a field related to such degree.”

Analyzing a similar provision, an estimated 10,000 people a year could benefit from a measure limited to Ph.D.s in STEM fields from U.S. universities. However, since this new provision also allows for Ph.D.s from foreign universities, the annual number of potential beneficiaries could be higher. Moreover, the bill uses a broader definition of STEM.

The bill states, “The term ‘program of study involving science, technology, engineering, or mathematics’ means a field included in the Department of Education’s Classification of Instructional Programs taxonomy within the summary groups of agricultural sciences, natural resources and conservation, computer and information sciences and support services, engineering, biological and biomedical sciences, mathematics and statistics, military technologies, physical sciences, or medical residency and fellowship programs, or the summary group subsets of accounting and related services and taxation.”

The broader definition of STEM will carry several benefits. “The bill also expands the definition of STEM in sensible directions that include highly skilled and productive individuals in important industries,” noted Alex Nowrastesh of the Cato Institute. Attorney Greg Siskind said, “Including physicians who do residency and fellowships in the U.S. also has the added benefit of dramatically helping health care in the U.S. since MDs are one of the most backlogged occupations for green cards.”

An indirect benefit of the provision will be to help individuals waiting many years in employment-based green card backlogs even if they do not have a Ph.D. That is because individuals with Ph.D.s who previously would have used a green card number would now be exempt from the numerical limits.

“It is increasingly important that the U.S. be able to recruit foreign-trained Ph.D.s,” said Mark Regets, a senior fellow at the National Foundation for American Policy. “Not only do they link us to research being done abroad, but they are an increasing proportion of the total doctorate-level STEM talent in the world. It is not just China that has increased Ph.D. production, but many European and other developed countries as well.”

Postdoctoral researchers work at U.S. universities after completing their Ph.D.s and play a significant role in research in the United States. Approximately 56% of postdocs at U.S. universities are on temporary visas, with many in biological sciences, medical sciences and engineering. A large number of PhD.s with foreign degrees assist in research and development. The new measure would allow many more an opportunity to stay and contribute in the United States.

A great example of someone who could have benefited from a special green card provision for Ph.D.s is Katalin Karikó. She is credited with producing the underlying research breakthrough that made messenger RNA possible for vaccine use. That discovery likely already has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Karikó earned her Ph.D. in Hungary and toiled for years in the United States, first as a postdoctoral researcher, before her work became recognized as life-saving.

The House is expected to vote on the bill as soon as next week. The legislation, including the new immigration provisions, would need to be reconciled with (and pass) the Senate and signed by the president to become law.

Helping America and its companies better compete for talent through startup visas and a clear path to U.S. permanent residence for the world’s top researchers might help a bill on innovation live up to its name.

Source: House Adds ‘Game-Changing’ Visas For Immigrant Startups And Ph.D.s

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Semotiuk: Foreign Investors Need Help From America’s EB-5 Immigrant Program

2022/01/27 Leave a comment

Funny op-ed that reads more as Semotiuk’s brief for a client than broader policy arguments. And not convinced of the overall economic benefits claimed for the program but understand the frustration of  applicants caught by operational changes during the pandemic:

Marcos Bertola is a U.S. EB-5 Regional Center foreign immigrant investor whose green card is in limbo because the Regional Center program shut down while his application was in process. He is one of over 30,000 such committed investors whose I-526 immigration petitions are stuck. At least $15 billion in capital investment and almost 500,000 American jobs are caught up in this logjam according to IIUSA, Invest in the USA.

Better Understanding Needed

“I believe the lack of sympathy from Congress towards what investors are going through with the lapse of the Regional Center program is due at large to people not realizing who they are,” said Bertola. He added, “Investors are seen as millionaires who can afford to wait another year so that the delay won´t affect their lives. But in our case, and that of many EB-5 investors we know of, we are just middle-class families investing our savings in the American economy to give a better education for our children and because we believe in the excellence of the American institutions to such a degree that we want to be part of it.”

Bertola describes how the process started for his family, “The decision to immigrate to the US started when my daughter was finishing high school and decided to become a nurse. Researching on how she could study in the US we learned that EB-5 seemed an opportunity for us to be with her as a family. My wife who is a researcher graduated with a Master´s Degree at one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America was thrilled with the idea of being able become a doctor in the US.”

Bertola filed his EB-5 investor petition in 2016, when adjudication times were expected to be around 14 months. It took three years for it to be approved, yet he was glad and expected things to run faster after that. The next step in their immigration journey was to get approval from the National Visa Center to get their immigrant interviews at the U.S. Consulate abroad. He and his wife even bought a house in the US in 2019 in Orlando, Florida expecting everything would work out. That house has been empty ever since, creating a financial burden of paying for two households, with property taxes, insurance, HOA, etc., in addition to their expenses overseas.

Consulates Closing Didn’t Help

Bertola indicates, “Our documents were filed at the National Visa Center on March 2020, but due to the pandemic, Consulates worldwide closed that month. When they resumed immigration interviews one year later, there was a 4-tier priority to determine which immigration petitions should be interviewed first and EB5 cases were last on the list.”

The Bertola oddessy continued, “Our interview was finally scheduled, with the assistance of a Florida Senator´s office, for July 30th, 2021 after the sunset of the Regional Center Program. A week after the interview, we got an email from the Consulate saying that everything was good on our end, and they were waiting for the reboot of the program to issue our visas. We were in the incredible situation of having all steps of our petition approved, including the Consulate interview, but unable to get our visas due to the lapse. Our passports are still with the Consulate since then.”

Psychological Toll

This wait has also put an immense psychological burden on his children. “My daughter who was on her 3rd year as a nursing student has just decided she can no longer wait to go. My wife could be graduated in the biomedical field and working in healthcare in the U.S. by now if not for this reauthorization lapse. Our lives have been put on hold for many years in the expectation of moving to the U.S., but every time a deadline seems close, a disappointment comes and uncertainty grows,” Bertola says. He adds, “Those years of professional development and achievements are being robbed from us, especially my children who are starting their careers. Our personal belongings are in a warehouse for more than a year, ready to be shipped, and we spend our time searching the internet for news about the reauthorization which never comes.”

No Sense Of Urgency

The way Bertola sees it, “There is no sense of urgency in Congress towards the reauthorization, and investors are being used as hostages in the negotiations.” A grandfathering bill, such as FIFPA (Foreign Investors Fairness Protection Act) could easily solve this problem, but according to Bertola it lacks political awareness. “It´s a damaging situation for the reputation of the program and could bring as consequence the loss of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs if the investors start to sue to get their investment back. Nobody wins, but we investors are the weakest link,” says Bertola.

“Right now, our best hope is to have our voices and personal stories heard. I have a dream of moving to America as a legal immigrant and to become an American citizen in the future, but that dream is being denied for thousands of investors who did nothing wrong but were caught in the political turmoil of these past years,” concludes Bertola.

Grandfathering Legislation Needed

Dealing with this problem, Kurt Reuss a securities broker and founder of EB5 Marketplace, recently wrote, “Existing EB-5 regional center investors are stuck in limbo right now as their applications remain frozen due to the lapse of the Regional Center Program. The U.S. government has an obligation to live up to its end of the bargain: adjudication of the petitions of investors who invested and filed in good faith. To do otherwise, would be just plain wrong and would negatively impact our immigration reputation.”

According to Reuss, who advocates an end to the Regional Center program in favor of the EB-5 direct investment option, “Simple grandfathering legislation can protect those investors who filed their petition when the program was authorized. Take care of past regional center investors who acted in good faith and end the program with that.”

Whether or not the Regional Center program is renewed, it is clear that it is time to help the foreign investors caught in the fray.

Source: Foreign Investors Need Help From America’s EB-5 Immigrant Program

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Unlike Trump, Biden Plan Welcomes Immigrant Scientists And Engineers

2022/01/24 Leave a comment

Of note given likely impact on relative attractiveness of Canada compared to USA but degree not known:

Although Donald Trump said he favored “merit-based” immigration, his policy team never seemed to find high-skilled foreign nationals it wanted to let work in the United States. In contrast, the Biden administration has proposed new policies that take the opposite approach.

Announced January 21, 2022, the new Biden policies can be divided into four general areas. Each holds the potential for making America more welcoming for talented foreign-born individuals at a time when human capital and innovation have never been more valuable to a nation.

Improved National Interest Waivers For Employment-Based Immigrants: As reported earlier in an article previewing immigration in 2022, new guidance for “National Interest Waivers” in the employment-based second preference could be a significant improvement for many immigrants. “The USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] policy update clarifies how the national interest waiver can be used for persons with advanced degrees in STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] fields and entrepreneurs, as well as the significance of letters from governmental and quasi-governmental entities,” according to a Biden administration fact sheet describing the new policies. “This update will promote efficient and effective benefit processing as USCIS reviews requests for national interest waivers.”

The new guidance could expand the use of national interest waivers for immigrant entrepreneurs and potentially for a broader range of highly skilled individuals with expertise in science, engineering and other fields. The narrow interpretation in current USCIS guidance has frustrated immigrants since using such waivers allows foreign nationals to “self-petition.” That means (per USCIS) “they do not need an employer to sponsor them.” National interest waivers can also be a relief from the Department of Labor’s lengthy labor certification process. 

(See here for the USCIS policy manual update on national interest waivers.)MORE FOR YOUNATO’s Technology Innovation Initiatives Are Moving Into High GearAI 50 2021: America’s Most Promising Artificial Intelligence CompaniesImpossible Foods’ CEO Says Going Public Is ‘Inevitable.’ So Why Have Most Of 2021’s Food Listings Spoiled?

Updating O-1A Visas: “O-1A [are for] individuals with an extraordinary ability in the sciences, education, business, or athletics (not including the arts, motion pictures or television industry),” according to USCIS. However, in the past, USCIS has adopted a narrow view of who is eligible for the visas. A Biden administration official said on background the new policy is expected to expand significantly the eligibility for O-1A visas in STEM fields. (See here for the USCIS policy manual update on O-1A visas.)

“In this update, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is clarifying how it determines eligibility for immigrants of extraordinary abilities, such as Ph.D. holders, in the science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) fields,” according to the fact sheet. “The new update provides examples of evidence that may satisfy the O-1A evidentiary criteria and discusses considerations that are relevant to evaluating such evidence, with a focus on the highly technical nature of STEM fields and the complexity of the evidence often submitted.”

Dan Berger of Curran, Berger & Kludt thinks the new O-1A guidance will be helpful. “O-1 visas had become more difficult to obtain,” he said in an interview. “New guidance is helpful to clarify how the statutory criteria apply to STEM fields and the modern world. Many of the criteria were written before the internet age.”

Expanding Eligibility For STEM OPT: As discussed here, the Biden administration has expanded eligibility for STEM Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows international students to gain practical experience for 12 months and an additional 24 months in a STEM field. Many international students would not come to America without OPT and the ability to work in their field, including the potential later to obtain H-1B status and an employment-based green card. 

In a Federal Register notice (January 21, 2022), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced, “The Secretary of Homeland Security is amending the DHS STEM Designated Degree Program List [for OPT] by adding 22 qualifying fields of study.” The fields include Cloud Computing, Anthrozoology, Climate Science, Mathematical Economics, Business Analytics, Data Visualization, Financial Analytics and others. (More details are available in the Federal Register notice.)

Expanded Programs For J-1 Exchange Visitors: The Biden administration has also proposed two expansions in the use of J-1 visas that may represent new routes to America for individuals in STEM fields. “The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) is announcing an ‘Early Career STEM Research Initiative,’ to facilitate non-immigrant BridgeUSA exchange visitors coming to the United States to engage in STEM research through research, training or educational exchange visitor programs with host organizations, including businesses,” according to the administration’s fact sheet. “ECA is also announcing new guidance that will facilitate additional academic training for undergraduate and graduate students in STEM fields on the J-1 visa for periods of up to 36 months.” 

Without reviewing text on the new J-1 policies, Lynden Melmed, a partner at Berry Appleman & Leiden and former chief counsel for USCIS, said the changes could be quite positive. He also views the other policy proposals favorably.

“Immigration is often about fitting square pegs into round holes, and that won’t ever change,” he said in an interview. “But over the years, the policy guidance and procedures have become so inflexible that we risk losing employees who are working in developing fields critical to national security. The guidance on O-1 visas and foreign students restores some sanity to the process.”

“Expanding the number of STEM fields is long overdue and very welcome,” he said. “DHS took a careful approach when it first issued the STEM list. Today’s announcement is key because it signals the government will try to keep up with the rapidly changing academic environment.” 

Statistics on international students help illustrate why the Biden approach aimed at attracting international students makes more sense than the Trump administration’s restrictive policies. “At U.S. universities, foreign nationals account for 82% of the full-time graduate students in petroleum engineering, 74% in electrical engineering, 72% in computer and information sciences, 71% in industrial and manufacturing engineering, 70% in statistics” and over 50% in many other fields, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis. “At many U.S. universities, the data show it would be difficult to maintain important graduate programs without international students.”

The State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services still need to improve processing, and Congress must enact many immigration reforms. Notable reforms would include increasing the number of employment-based green cards and H-1B visas and eliminating the per-country limit for employer-sponsored immigrants. 

It is easy to forget the Trump administration’s generally hostile policies toward foreign-born scientists and engineers. In 2020, Donald Trump blocked the entry to the United States of employment-based immigrants and H-1B visa holders via proclamations, and it took unfavorable court rulings on H-1B visas for USCIS finally to end four years of restrictive immigration policies against employers. Should the same policy team return to the White House in 2025, the goal on foreign talent likely won’t be to shut the barn door tighter but to dismantle the barn and close down the farm.

The Biden administration sees international education and innovation much differently from its predecessor, and the context from which these new policies have been proposed is clear. America is viewed as losing ground to China and other countries in the battle for talent. The latest proposals show the U.S. government is now attempting to join this battle and encourage talented foreign-born scientists and engineers to become part of the U.S. economy and the nation.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/01/21/unlike-trump-biden-plan-welcomes-immigrant-scientists-and-engineers/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=follow&cdlcid=5e4bc7f55b099ce02faa6b40&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=follow&cdlcid=5e4bc7f55b099ce02faa6b40&sh=3a3612d955f6

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