How Canada is fighting the war on talent

2020/12/09 Leave a comment

Good analysis:

Some might look at Noubar Afeyan’s career as a frustrating example of a talented Canadian scientist who got away. The chairman and co-founder of Boston-based Moderna, one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine makers, was born in Lebanon, immigrated to Canada with his family in the 1970s and did his undergraduate studies at McGill University.

Then we lost him. Mr. Afeyan left to get his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, eventually becoming a star scientist and entrepreneur. He has founded several successful U.S. biotech startups and registered more than 100 patents.

The good news is that Canada’s technology landscape has dramatically changed in the past three-plus decades.

Yes, like Mr. Afeyan, many Canadians are still drawn south by the reputations of U.S. colleges and tech giants. But the evidence suggests Canada has largely reversed its brain drain. This country’s fast-growing technology sector is more than holding its own in the global race for talent, even after the deep economic shock of the pandemic, according to an analysis of employment data contained in a new report for the Innovation Economy Council.

Despite the terrible toll of the pandemic, Canada has become more competitive because there are more opportunities here than ever for people to learn, to build companies and to thrive. And that’s making the market for technology jobs remarkably resilient.

Indeed, there are nearly 100,000 more jobs now in so-called STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and math – in this country than there were before the pandemic. There is still a gaping hole in Canada’s job market, but not for these people. For the most part, Canadian startups and technology companies absorbed the shock, moved to remote work and in some cases have expanded aggressively.

The resilience of tech employment in these uncertain times is a testament to the Canadian sector’s core strengths – an immigration system that welcomes talented foreigners, a growing crop of promising homegrown STEM graduates and a thriving ecosystem of companies.

It’s a tale of two economies, of course. While there was a net gain of 98,500 STEM jobs, Canada had 431,000 fewer non-STEM jobs in October than it had in February, in sectors such as retail, tourism and airlines.

And there is a cautionary note about the STEM jobs. The number of job postings for these workers is down roughly 50 per cent since February, according to an analysis of data from the Labour Market Information Council. This suggests that companies are still hiring, but perhaps not as enthusiastically as they were before the pandemic.

Another consequence of COVID-19 is that it has accelerated the shift to distributed work forces in the tech industry – teams of employees scattered across different cities and countries. Companies have learned that it’s no longer essential to bring people to them. They can just as easily go where the talent is.

Tech giants – including Google, Facebook and Amazon – have set up large Canadian research and development operations in recent years. A growing number of foreign startups are doing the same. They are moving here to tap our plentiful and affordable supply of programmers, engineers, artificial-intelligence experts and scientists.

Talent flows both ways. Thousands of Canadians continue to pursue careers and education in the U.S. despite four years of anti-immigration rhetoric by outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump. Mr. Trump threatened to tighten H-1B visas, but it turns out Canadian STEM workers are still successfully applying for them – more Canadians were issued H-1Bs in 2019 than in 2018.

Still, that exodus is significantly smaller than the inflow of foreign students, workers and entrepreneurs. Most of our departing STEM workers go to the United States – IEC research shows that more than 10,000 Canadians went south in 2019 with H-1B visas and green cards. But Canada gained nearly 23,000 global STEM workers through permanent residency and temporary foreign worker visas that year.

These newcomers are more likely than Canadians born here to work and study in STEM disciplines. It’s proof that Canada is a place where talented foreigners want to live, work and start companies.

There is also some evidence that the combination of U.S. political strife and China’s democracy crackdown in Hong Kong may be drawing Canadian expats home. As many as 300,000 of the roughly three million Canadian passport holders living outside the country may have returned home since COVID-19 hit, many for good.

But without opportunity, none of that would happen.

Today, it’s tempting to imagine a different a different life story for Moderna’s Noubar Afeyan. Instead of leaving, he stays in Montreal and goes on to found a biotech company that develops a Canadian-made COVID-19 vaccine that the rest of the world desperately wants. His company is worth more than $60-billion and employs thousands of Canadian scientists.

The resilience of Canada’s STEM work force through the pandemic suggests this kind of homegrown-hero story is not so far-fetched.

Canadians will always leave to find their way in the world. This week’s sale of highly touted Montreal startup Element AI to a California software company marked an unfortunate loss of both intellectual property and talent. Canada isn’t the world’s biggest pond and we’ll never retain all of our companies and people. But we’ve shown that we can win the war for talent.

The Trump presidency peddled its anti-immigration messaging, eroding the false narrative that the best and brightest were always welcome in America. Canada countered with policies and public-relations efforts aimed at attracting talent, such as the highly successful Global Talent Stream program and Communitech’s “We Want You” campaign. It has worked.

But the talent war isn’t over. The key is to continue to create – and promote – opportunities and incentives for the best and brightest here in Canada. If we’ve learned anything from the past few years, it’s that narratives matter. And Canada has a good story to tell.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-how-canada-is-fighting-the-war-on-talent/

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Somin: Rights and Wrongs of the Trump Administration’s Revised Citizenship Test

2020/12/07 Leave a comment

A balanced take, while noting the fundamental but understandable contradiction between testing newcomers and not current citizens. Money quote:

Perhaps the people hired to design the citizenship test should be required to meet certain standards of civic knowledge themselves! To the classic problem of “who guards the guardians,” we might add the issue of “who tests the testers.”

…

The Trump administration recently introduced a new and somewhat more difficult citizenship test for immigrants. The 128 questions that can be used on the new test are listed here.

Some of the changes are reasonable, and arguably improvements over the old version. On the other hand, many of the new questions are badly drafted, incorporating various serious errors. Moreover, the very existence of this test (both the new and old versions) raises the question of why immigrants should be required to pass a test to get voting rights, but not natives.

The changes to the immigration test are far less objectionable than most of the Trump administration’s other changes to immigration policy, most of which are calculated to keep immigrants out of the United States altogether, and have collectively made the US more closed to migration than ever before. By contrast, making the citizenship test harder doesn’t deny people the right to live and work in the US, because all or nearly all of those eligible to take it in the first place already have the right to live and work in the US as permanent residents, and will not be deported if they fail the test. Indeed, they can even take the test again the next time it is administered. The main rights that turn on passing the test are the right to vote, and the right to certain types of welfare benefits.

Unlike the right to live and work in a given location, the right to vote is not just a personal liberty, but also, as John Stuart Mill put it, the right to exercise “power over others.” Thus, there is some potential justification for restricting the franchise to those with at least a minimal level of political knowledge. That is, at least in theory, what the citizenship test is supposed to do. And it is also the reason why we deny the suffrage to children, among others.

Some of the changes from the old test to the new one are reasonable. For example, it makes sense to get rid of questions about geography, while adding more questions about history, law, and political institutions. The latter types of knowledge are far more likely to be useful for voting purposes.

It also makes sense to expand the number of questions on the test from ten to twenty. More questions make it less likely that someone will fail or pass simply because of a fluke related to the questions that just happen to be chosen for that administration of the test. The lower the number of questions, the more likely it is that a knowledgeable applicant will fail because she was unlucky, in that the questions selected for that particular administration just happened to be chosen from among the small number she didn’t know the answer to. Conversely, a badly prepared applicant might get “lucky” if the ten questions chosen just happened to be among the few she is familiar with.

It is also worth noting that, while the new test is more difficult than the old, it still isn’t that hard. The vast majority of the questions are fairly basic in nature, and applicants need only get 12 of 20 right (60%) in order to pass. That is the same percentage as on the old test (6 of 10). Thus, I’m skeptical of predictions by some immigrant rights advocates that the new test will lead to a great increase in the failure rate, though they may well be right to suspect that this is what the Trump administration is hoping for.

While some of the changes made on the new test are defensible, many of the questions are badly designed or based on factual errors. It is particulary  ironic that a test designed to weed out bad potential voters includes some egregious errors about the history of voting rights. Two of the questions ask “When did all men get the right to vote?” and “When did all women get the right to vote?” In reality it is simply not true that either”all men” or “all women” have the right to vote—even to this day.

Even if the relevant men and women are only adult citizens, current law continues to deny the franchise to large numbers of both men and women. Most states deny it to substantial categories of mentally ill people, and to many convicted felons. These are not marginal exceptions. They affect  millions of people. And, of course, the franchise is also denied to millions of non-citizen residents of the US. That’s why the citizenship test exists in the first place!

Another question asks respondents to name a power that is “only for the states.” Among the possible correct answers are “Provide schooling and education,” “Provide protection (police),” and “Approve zoning and land use.”In reality, the federal government has a major role in each of these policy areas. The federal Department of Education funds and controls a wide range of education programs, there are numerous federal law enforcement agencies, and the federal government imposes a variety of restrictions on land use—especially in the many places where it actually owns large amounts of land!

I am sympathetic to the argument that the federal government has intruded into these areas far more than the original meaning of the Constitution allows. But the citizenship test should not conflate the normative debate over this issue with a factual issue about the current distribution of power. And even under relatively narrow interpretations of federal power under the Constitution, the federal government would still have a role in each of these areas when it comes to military education, the federal territories, the District of Columbia and federally owned land.

A number of questions on the test dress up normative preferences as factual issues. For example, one question asks who members of the House of Representatives represent, and there is a similar question about who senators represent. The “correct” answers are “citizens” in their respective states (for senators) or district (for members of the House). Whether members of Congress are supposed to represent all residents of their constituency or only those who are citizens is a actually a contested normative issue. As a practical matter, members who represent areas with large immigrant populations often do take non-citizen interests into account in various ways. Presenting this as a factual question with an obvious right answer is wrong.

The same can be said of the question which asks why “[i]t is important for all men age 18 through 25 to register for the Selective Service.” Among the “correct” answers are that it is a “[c]ivic duty,” and that  it [m]akes the draft fair, if needed.” The framing of both the question and the list of correct answers overlooks the long history of opposition to the draft, which dates all the way back to the 19th century. There have long been those who oppose it on the grounds that the draft is a form of unjust forced labor, that it is unconstitutional, that many of the wars fought by draftees are immoral and unjust, or some combination of all three reasons. Opposition to the draft (and draft registration) is as much an American tradition as support for it—perhaps even more. The answer that “it makes the draft fair, if needed” overlooks the longstanding argument that the male-only draft is unjust sex discrimination. A recent court decision has even ruled that it is unconstitutional for that very reason, though the ruling was later reversed on appeal.

These are far from the only questions on the test that are either based on factual errors, smuggle in contestable normative preferences, or some combination of both. If the federal government is going to continue to have a civics test for new citizens, they should hire some people to draft it who actually know what they are doing—at least enough to avoid very basic errors.

Some of these flawed questions are carried over from the old test (though not the one about representation). But it is still a mistake to include them in the new one.

Despite the flaws in the current citizenship test, I am not on principle opposed to requiring would-be voters to pass a test of basic political knowledge. Voter ignorance is a serious problem, and such a requirement might potentially curtail it, at least at the margin. Even the current flawed test might still be better (or less bad) than no test at all.

But that, in turn raises the question of why it should be imposed on immigrants, but not native-born citizens. One possible answer is that we can reasonably assume that natives already know these things. But, sadly, that isn’t true. Studies show that almost two-thirds of current American citizens would fail even the old citizenship test if they had to take it without studying. The percentage who would fail the new one may well be even higher.

Perhaps the answer is that voting is an inherent right of citizenship, so all citizens should be given the franchise, regardless of how ignorant they might be about politics and government. But this runs into the fact that we already deny the franchise to large numbers of citizens based on their real or imagined lack of competence to be good voters: children, many of the mentally ill, and numerous convicted felons. In combination, these groups add up to a third or more of the population. If it is morally permissible to deny the franchise to incompetent (or supposedly incompetent) children, mentally ill people, immigrants, and felons, why not to ignorant native-born adults? Indeed, some of these groups (most notably children) are denied the franchise based on crude generalizations about their competence that don’t actually apply to many of them.

Discrimination between politically ignorant immigrants and similarly ignorant natives is another example of morally arbitrary discrimination based on parentage and place of birth, on which most immigration restrictions are based. Why not just impose a knowledge test that applies to all would-be voters regardless of whether they are immigrants or natives, children or adults, mentally ill or not? Any who pass are entitled to vote, and those who fail can try again later.

One possible answer to this question is that we cannot trust the government to come up with an objective test, as opposed to one calculated to weed out opponents of the party in power. This problem is already evident in some of the Trump administration test questions discussed above, which seem designed to privilege more conservative answers to questions (such as the one about who members of Congress represent). The incentive for the government to “rig” the test would be even greater if it applied to all potential voters, not just immigrants.  The history of voting tests is not a happy one; it includes, for example, “literacy tests” used to weed out black voters in the Jim Crow-era South. This is the main reason why I am skeptical of adopting knowledge tests as a general solution to the problem of political ignorance. The idea is likely to be  pernicious in practice, even if defensible in theory.

But even if they cannot be easily changed, we should at least acknowledge the morally questionable aspects of the citizenship test for immigrants. And if we are going to continue to have one, it should be more competently designed. Perhaps the people hired to design the citizenship test should be required to meet certain standards of civic knowledge themselves! To the classic problem of “who guards the guardians,” we might add the issue of “who tests the testers.”

Source: Rights and Wrongs of the Trump Administration’s Revised Citizenship Test

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6 charged in ‘birth tourism’ scheme that cost U.S. taxpayers millions

2020/12/04 Leave a comment

Medicaid fraud, not the service itself:

Six people were charged in an elaborate “birth tourism” scheme that helped Turkish women secure U.S. citizenship for their children and cost American taxpayers upward of $2 million, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The alleged ringleaders, Sarah Kaplan and Ibrahim Aksakal, both residents of Long Island, New York, brazenly advertised their services on Turkish-language Facebook pages and websites with titles like “My baby should be born in America,” prosecutors said.

The defendants are accused of providing expectant mothers a full-service experience: lodging in New York, transportation, help applying for citizenship for their children, and purported “insurance” to cover all medical costs, which amounted to fraudulently-obtained Medicaid benefits.

The cost for these services: roughly $7,500, nearly all in cash, prosecutors said.

Between January 2017 and September this year, the suspects were paid approximately $750,000 in fees, and Medicaid disbursed more than $2.1 million in illicitly-obtained benefits, according to prosecutors.

“The defendants cashed in on the desire for birthright citizenship, and the American taxpayer ultimately got stuck with the $2.1 million bill,” Seth DuCharme, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

Five of the defendants – Aksakal, Kaplan, Enes Burak Cakiroglu, Fiordalisa Marte and Edgar Rodriguez – were arrested Wednesday morning. They are all residents of Long Island, where they operated seven “birth houses,” prosecutors said.

The sixth suspect, who has yet to be taken into custody, was not identified.

Aksakal, Kaplan and Cakiroglu were charged with conspiring to commit visa fraud, health care fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Marte and Rodriguez were charged with conspiring to commit health care fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.

It was not immediately clear if they had hired lawyers.

Birth tourism has long brought expectant mothers to the U.S. The benefits are substantial: the child is given American citizenship, granting them a lifelong right to live and work and collect benefits in the U.S. And when they turn 21, they can sponsor their parents’ application for an American green card.

But the six defendants charged Wednesday submitted fraudulent New York state Medicaid benefits applications stating that the Turkish women were permanent New York residents who had no income and who resided in one of the “birth houses” maintained by the suspects, according to court papers.

The suspects submitted at least 99 Medicaid claims for different women, according to court papers. In all, the defendants facilitated the births of approximately 119 children, who now hold U.S. citizenship, prosecutors said.

Two of the defendants, Marte and Rodriguez, used their experience as assistors, people who are trained and certified to help individuals in New York state apply for health coverage, to facilitate the Medicaid part of the scheme, according to court papers.

The $750,000 brought in by the defendants was funneled to bank accounts in Turkey, thereby preventing the government from seizing it, according to court papers.

The defendants allegedly used their web pages to attract customers. A January 2018 post to the “My Baby Should be Born in America” Facebook page reads: “If you believe your baby should be born in the USA and become an American citizen then you are at the right place.”

The post also informed would-be customers that the defendants’ competitors’ fees were higher because of “misguided information that insurance will not cover expensive hospital and birth fees,” prosecutors said.

Source: 6 charged in ‘birth tourism’ scheme that cost U.S. taxpayers millions

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

New U.S. Citizenship Test Is Longer and More Difficult

2020/12/04 Leave a comment

One of the better analyses of the test and expected impact that I have seen:

The Trump administration is rolling out sweeping changes to the test immigrants must take to become United States citizens, injecting hints of conservative philosophy and making the test harder for many learners of the English language.

The new citizenship test that went into effect on Tuesday is longer than before, with applicants now required to answer 12 out of 20 questions correctly instead of six out of 10. It is also more complex, eliminating simple geography and adding dozens of possible questions, some nuanced and involving complex phrasing, that could trip up applicants who do not consider them carefully.

Of the 18 questions removed from the previous test, 11 were questions that had simple, sometimes one-word answers.

The new test adds one more hurdle for immigrants who hope to become voting citizens, coming in the waning days of an administration that has imposed substantial new barriers to immigration and limits on the ability of those already in the country to aspire to legal residence and, eventually, naturalization.

One test question that has drawn particular scrutiny provides a new answer to the question, “Who does a U.S. Senator represent?” Previously, the answer was “all people of the state”; on the new test, it is “citizens” in the state.

Singled out for a new question is the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states all powers not specifically granted to the federal government, a part of the Bill of Rights that is a favorite among conservatives questioning federal authority.

Another new question, “Why did the United States enter the Vietnam War?” has one answer that is considered correct: “to stop the spread of Communism.” The test does not take on the issue of the vehement protests or the huge death toll stemming from the war.

Immigration organizations, including some that have helped thousands of people complete their naturalization applications over the past decade, warn that the new test could make it harder for poor immigrants from non-English-speaking countries to become citizens and ultimately suppress the number of immigrants who vote.

Critics also said the new test could create even more backlogs in a system already plagued with delays.

“It’s a last-ditch effort on their way out the door for the administration to keep people from realizing their dreams of becoming citizens,” said Eric Cohen, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, a nonprofit group that helps permanent residents apply for citizenship.

“There is no legal reason, no regulatory reason to do this,” said Mr. Cohen, noting that the citizenship test had remained unchanged since 2008. “They decided on their own that they have to change it for political reasons.”

Dan Hetlage, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the naturalization process, said in a statement that the test was revised “to ensure that it remains an instrument that comprehensively assesses applicants’ knowledge of American history, government and values and supports assimilation.”

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has the option of reversing the changes, though that likely could not occur, if at all, until several months into the new year.

The new test will be required of all applicants who apply for citizenship after Dec. 1, though there is often a lag of several months between when candidates apply and when they are scheduled for an interview with a U.S.C.I.S. officer, meaning that some candidates may still be taking the old test.

The current pass rate for the citizenship test, according to U.S.C.I.S., is 91 percent. An analysis of the new test by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network suggested that 40 questions out of the original 100 remained unchanged from the previous version; the rest were reworded or newly introduced.

Already, some immigrants were expressing nervousness about changes to the test.

Nefi Reyes, an electrician from El Salvador who took the earlier test this year, passed with a perfect score. It had been 30 years since he had crossed the border into the United States to escape the civil war in El Salvador, and he voted in the United States for the first time in November.

“I feel lucky that I got it done,” Mr. Reyes said of the changes to the test. He had had difficulty memorizing the names of the colonies, he said, and the new test requires applicants to name not three of the original 13 states, as he had managed to do, but five.

Luz Gallegos, executive director of Todec, a nonprofit group that assists immigrants in Southern California, said her organization had seen a rush in immigrants applying to take the citizenship test, not only so they could vote in the November election, but because many hoped to avoid the new test. “As it is, it’s difficult for them to memorize all the answers to the civics test,” she said.

Immigrants are not alone in finding the citizenship test, even in its previous form, challenging. About one in three Americans could pass a multiple-choice test consisting of items taken from that version, according to a 2018 national survey by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Most of the respondents did not know how many justices serve on the Supreme Court or which countries the United States fought in World War II.

Citizenship tests have gone through various incarnations since being introduced around a century ago, replacing an earlier system, broadly criticized at the time, in which naturalization judges evaluated immigrants’ knowledge of civics and the English language as they saw fit.

“There was absolutely inconsistency and unfairness in the way that prospective citizens were examined by naturalization judges,” said Jack Schneider, an assistant professor of education at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, noting that such hearings resulted in the rejection of large numbers of applicants.

The test has changed considerably over time. Decades ago, the test asked how tall the Bunker Hill Monument is, missing, critics said, the more important issue of what it stands for. Another question, “How many stars are there on a quarter?” was deleted after it was noted that the right answer depended on the quarter.

The new citizenship test is one of a number of moves made under the Trump administration to not only halt unauthorized immigration but restrict legal immigration as well. The administration has made it harder for people to obtain asylum, increased the costs of applying for citizenship and, under the cloak of the coronavirus pandemic, suspended the issuance of green cards to immigrants seeking temporary work in the country.

Taken together, these moves amount to a break from what historically had been bipartisan support for naturalization for immigrants who lived and worked in the United States and embraced the opportunity to become citizens.

Applicants must already fill out a 20-page application, pass background checks, submit a bevy of documents and pass civics and English tests during an interview. The government moved this year to raise fees for naturalization from $725 to $1,170, or $1,160 if the application was filed online, but a federal judge in California blocked the increase in September.

Organizations that offer citizenship classes to help immigrants study for the test are scrambling to revamp their lesson plans to respond to the new questions.

Lynne Weintraub, who trains citizenship instructors and was involved in the design of the 2008 test, said the revisions were adopted without outside professional input that might have helped ensure that the test was a fair and valid measure of applicants’ knowledge of civics.

“You can’t even imagine the turmoil that this has created,” Ms. Weintraub said. The new test, she said, presents additional problems for many English language learners by clustering abstract concepts into one phrase in some questions, “making them impossible for immigrants with low English proficiency and less education to follow.”

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Enrollment By International Students In U.S. Colleges Plummets

2020/12/03 Leave a comment

More on the decline of the attractiveness of study in the USA under the Trump administration. Will see over the next few years the degree to which that changes under a Biden administration:

Nikita Chinchwade moved from India to the U.S. last fall to get a master’s degree.

“It had been a dream of mine for a very long time because of the quality of education here,” she says.

The U.S. has historically been a top destination for international students. At last count there were more than a million. They’re attracted by the high-tech facilities and opportunities for research; the easy, nonhierarchical interaction between faculty and students; and the open, social e­nvironment on campuses.

But this year, in a survey of more than 700 colleges and universities, the Institute of International Education found total international enrollment plummeted 16% between fall of 2019 and fall of 2020. Statistics on new international students was even grimmer — a 43% drop. Tens of thousands have deferred enrollment.

“We’ve never had a decrease like that,” said Allan Goodman, who heads the Institute of International Education. But he added that he believes the numbers will go back up once the coronavirus pandemic passes, predicting “surges of students” enrolling. “What we do know is, when pandemics end, there’s tremendous pent-up demand.”

While the pandemic is an obvious reason for the decline, some experts point out that international student enrollment has been declining since 2016.

All this has serious consequences for higher education. To put it simply: These students bring in a lot of money.

Before the pandemic, international students contributed about $44 billion a year to the U.S. economy, says Rachel Banks, senior director for public policy and legislative strategy at NAFSA: Association of International Educators, citing an analysis from the 2018-2019 school year. And those students support about half a million jobs.

“They typically pay higher tuition rates than domestic students do,” Banks says. “And in some instances, they’ll even pay more than out-of-state students would. So schools certainly would feel that directly.”

These students contribute more than money, bringing social and cultural diversity to U.S. campuses.

“Everybody is learning from each other. So you want to cast your net as wide as you can,” says Martin McFarlane, director of international student services at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The campus has among the highest number of international students of any university in the U.S., more than 10,500.

McFarlane says higher education is all about an exchange of ideas: “We are so interconnected globally that if you are cutting yourself off from that, you’re doing yourself a disservice.”

A Duke University study found that domestic students who engaged with international students enhanced their self-confidence, leadership and quantitative skills. U.S. undergrads were also more likely to “appreciate art [and] literature,” “place current problems in historical perspective” and “read or speak a foreign language.”

The United States has long recognized the long-term benefit to hosting these students in terms of influence and magnifying the country’s diplomatic “soft power.” A recent study shows that the U.S. educated 62 of last year’s world leaders. And research has found that international students develop a trust with their host countries, which also leads to future visits and future business interactions.

About half of international students come to the U.S. to study in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math. A 2017 analysis found that foreign nationals, for example, make up 81% of full-time graduate students in electrical engineering, 79% in computer science and 59% in civil engineering.

Alexis Abramson, dean of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, worries about having fewer international students in the STEM fields. “We’re all very concerned that the U.S. will lose its competitive edge,” she says. “Engineers and scientists invent things and innovate and solve a lot of the most pressing problems facing our world.”

A recent survey of 500 U.S. university officials found several reasons for fewer international students, including the visa process and high tuition costs as well as the political climate and feeling “unwelcome.” For the first time, a main reason listed was “global competition.” In stark contrast to the U.S. declines over the past few years, the U.K., Canada and Australia have seen enrollment spikes.

Banks of NAFSA isn’t surprised. She says the Trump administration has made it harder to study in the U.S. through its anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. Competitor countries, she adds, are stepping in to fill the void, “falling over themselves to say, ‘Look, the United States doesn’t want you, but we do!’ ”

Arvind Ganesh always wanted to study in the United States. He’s 22 and originally from Chennai, India. But when the time came to make a decision for graduate school, he chose Canada. “The education expense is one thing; the cost of living is another,” he explained. The U.S. also has “the problem of security to international students. I’m talking about racial bias.”

Students like Ganesh have contributed to double-digit increases in Canada. It has lower tuition costs, generous work-study policies and clear pathways to permanent residency and citizenship.

The U.K., America’s biggest competitor for international students, is also trying hard to recruit more, with an ambitious goal of 600,000 students by 2030. As part of its Study UK effort, officials have relaxed policies so students can stay and get more work experience after they graduate.

Ganesh starts classes in a month and is excited about making friends and learning about Canada. He’s not too worried about culture shock, saying he has heard Canadians are very friendly. “Even though it’s a very cold country, but you still feel warm when you feel people are welcoming and embracing.”

He says that’s what makes a different country feel like a home away from home.

Source: Enrollment By International Students In U.S. Colleges Plummets

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How Did Hasidic Jewry Become a Stronghold of Trumpism?

2020/12/03 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Is American Hasidism in crisis? After successfully rebuilding its institutions after the war, Hasidism in America has flourished. And yet, its response to COVID and its newfound reactionary political populism, leads us to ask the question: is something changing in contemporary Hasidism that’s worth examining more closely?

Much has been written lately about the politicization of the Hasidic world in America, particularly its full-throttled support of Donald Trump. In fact, Hasidic voting patterns now closely resemble those of evangelical Christians. Scholars and pundits have weighed in on this surprising political activism in a community that usually keeps a low profile and focuses on its internal needs. And this activism has become even more visible as Hasidic communities have flouted health guidelines in the COVD crisis and made a public health issue into a political one. While the fact of these phenomena have been well documented, what are some of the underlying conditions that have contributed to a kind of “perfect storm” of populist reactionary Hasidic activism?

Part of what we’re witnessing in this new Hasidic populism is another stage of Hasidic Americanization in the wake of the loss of the last vestiges of European authority. The great Hasidic figures from Eastern Europe commanded intense devotion and respect from their communities, representing an authentic world destroyed in the Holocaust. Others emerged to take their place but it’s arguable that the weight of authority of these masters was not replicated in their American or Israeli born successors.

This isn’t to argue that these new rebbes haven’t commanded respect; they certainly have. It’s simply to point out that the force of their authority is diminished in comparison to those who arrived in America from prewar Europe. Eastern Europe was the fertile ground of Hasidic aristocracy. America, Mandate Palestine, and Israel, stood in its shadow. The loss of first-hand exposure to those halcyon years diminished Hasidism’s luster and authenticity. It continues, albeit in a different register.

If this is true, it’s worth considering how it contributes to a rise of the Hasidic populism that’s taken to the streets to express disdain for the government and its health mandates. It’s a complicated situation and is certainly the result of many factors. In one sense, this is a classic example of a popular revolution when individuals without much authority somehow evoke a rebellion against authority (think of Castro and Che in Cuba), be it religious or civil, by touching the nerve of a rapidly growing community in crisis coupled with a weakened stature of leadership.

The transformation of COVID from a health crisis to a political movement in the Hasidic world is a phenomenon that merits deeper study. When and why did this happen? Why and how did street protests against mask mandates and synagogue and park closings turn into Trump rallies in Hasidic Brooklyn? It’s true that Trump espouses conservative values that many Hasidim identify with, but so did Ronald Reagan and he didn’t enjoy such passionate support. And Reagan arguably did more for Hasidim than Trump ever did when, in 1984, he granted them “disadvantaged minority status” enabling them to apply for federal funding for businesses.

Whether, in fact, this speaks to a significant shift in Hasidism’s politicization or not remains to be seen. What I’m pointing to here is the rise of a populist mind-set where a rabble-rousing radio talk show host and Hasidic outsider like Heshy Tischler, who has no authoritative role in the community whatsoever, can attract the attention of young Hasidic boys and compel them to take to the streets.

One could view this as a positive manifestation of the growing autonomy of these communities and their increased involvement in public political life. And yet, as I will suggest below, an unreconstructed Hasidism will invariably—and, given theological considerations, understandably—be attracted to a reactionary political agenda and autocratic leadership.

The Americanization of Hasidism 

Hasidism rose from the depths of Jewish traditional society in Eastern Europe during a tumultuous time. The Napoleonic Wars were changing the map of Europe, autocratic rule was slowly transforming into early stages of tolerance and later democracy. Emancipation may still have been decades away, but encroaching modernity from the West was making inroads into the traditional Jewish world, attracting some of its most talented youth.

In some way, Hasidism was both a rebellion against the internal autocracy of the rabbinic elite and the modernizing mind-set of the enlightenment (haskala). It made a play for both power and piety in a very unstable period. Among the challenges of a nascent Hasidic world was one of political alliances; in one case between Napoleon and the freedoms he promised, and in the other, Czar Alexander I and an autocracy that allowed Jewish enclaves to continue their traditional lives.

Similar debates made their way westward questioning whether emancipation was good for the Jews; that is, whether the modernization that accompanied the promise of freedom ultimately threatened the Jewish tradition. As told by Chaim Heilman in his Beit Rebbe, Shnuer Zalman of Liady offered a cogent assessment of the wager: if Napoleon wins, Jews will be materially successful but will suffer spiritually, and if Alexander wins, Jews will be materially impoverished but will spiritually flourish. Throughout its history, Hasidism has lived in the balance of that wager. It arguably filters through Hasidism’s entire negotiation with modernity. Perhaps until now.

America presented another way to understand this bargain. What we may be witnessing today is another layer of the complex process of the Americanization of Hasidism. The first stage may have been propagated by Eastern European Hasidic immigrants, many of whom were survivors of the Holocaust, in their initial reconstruction of Hasidic dynasties in America. Schneerson’s (Lubavitch) advocacy of a moment of silence in public school (supporting Jerry Falwell), his campaign to erect Hanukkah Menorahs in public squares, and his Noahide Law campaign to gentiles, all illustrate his deep belief in America.

And Teitelbaum’s attempt to secure public funding for special education in the yeshivot in the Satmar enclave, Kiryas Joel, speaks to the extent he too understood America as holding potential for his own religious vision. The Satmar enclave of Kiryas Joel isn’t a replica of something that existed in prewar Europe. It was, as David Myers and Naomi Stolzenberg write in their upcoming book, Teitelbaum’s American fantasy; an American shtetl.

In the street protests and general political activism in present day Hasidism we may be witnessing yet another iteration of Hasidism’s developing Americanism. While Hasidim have always supported political candidates and voted in relatively high numbers, most of the advocacy was primarily transactional; they supported candidates they thought could maximize their resources. In 2020, impromptu pro-Trump rallies in Flatbush and Boro Park, a pair of Brooklyn neighborhoods with high numbers of Orthodox Jews, illustrates a new kind of political populism seldom seen in communities that often prefer to stay out of the spotlight.

The question as to why Hasidim overwhelmingly supported an immoral, autocratic, and reactionary candidate with such verve and vigor is multivalent. One reading may have to do with a lopsided equation of integration. That is, on the one hand Hasidim are becoming politicized as a result of their developing Americanism, which values public political expression. At the same time, however, they haven’t revised their general worldview, which was built on earlier political realities, a theology and religious ideology founded on chosenness, and historic feelings of exclusion and resentment.

The “us vs. them” mentality that grew over time and the theology that informed traditional Jewish teaching in large part followed suit. In many ways the binary of “friend vs. enemy” plays into the Trump vision of America. Traditional Jews, like the Ultra-Orthodox Hasidim, have historically been attracted to strong autocratic leaders who shared their binary view of the world. In this sense, their support of Trump is predictable

The challenge of emancipation, or the “liberal social contract” with the Jews in Europe, required Jews to revise those ideological principles to become fully a part of larger society. Non-Orthodox Judaisms, Jewish secularisms, and to some extent Neo- and Modern Orthodoxy engaged this challenge in different ways. But American democracy demanded an even stronger revision.

American rabbi Mordecai Kaplan argued that chosenness simply could not survive American democracy intact. One cannot easily be full members of a democratic society and maintain a theologically exceptionalist status. He was right, until he was wrong. By the 1950s, sociologists talked of the “death of Orthodoxy” in America while Hasidism was just beginning to rebuild in this new land of tolerance—what Rabbi Schneerson called a “medina shel hesed” (a land of kindness). Whether and how Orthodoxy could bear the weight of American integrationism was an open question.

What the sociologists of the 1950s could not have predicted was the rise of the counter-culture that would re-frame America’s conformism into a multitude of expressions of difference, pluralism, and later, multiculturalism. This would not only save Orthodoxy but enable Hasidism to enter the public square with minimal ideological and theological revisions. Schneerson saw this in the 1960s more than any other American Jewish religious leader and his movement flourished, riding the wave of multiculturalism. One of the byproducts of the multicultural turn was the ability of more traditional Jewish communities, Hasidim among them, to maintain strict observance and retain their ideological and theological commitments while increasingly becoming a part of American society. By the 1960s, acculturation was no longer a prerequisite for integration. Hasidim entered the public square without having to pay much of a theological or ideological price. The “liberal social contract” no longer carried the weight it once did.

The problem, however, is that Hasidim entered the public square with their old-world chauvinistic and xenophobic inclinations intact and residual fears of the left stemming from the days when the left meant socialism in Europe and when Russia used communism as a tool to attack and demolish religion. Given Jews’ complicated relationship with race, and African Americans in particular, this fear easily transformed into a belief that the progressive left, in part in the BLM movement, was inherently anti-religious, and antisemitic. Interestingly, the antisemitism of the right seemed less threatening, perhaps more familiar, than the antisemitism of the left. Trump subtly exonerating the marchers at Charlottesville seemed less problematic than Linda Sarsour’s anti-Zionism. Even though they weren’t Zionists, “Jews will not replace us” seemed less threatening to the Hasidim than “Israel is a colonialist state.”

Another paradoxical twist in this story is that the antisemitism of the left today in America is largely targeting Zionism, which the Hasidim largely don’t support either, albeit for very different reasons. Thus, what’s emerged is a kind of Hasidic anti-Zionist pro-Israelism; tacit support for Israel as an act of tribal fidelity rather than any form of Zionism. Ask a Hasidic Jew touting Trump’s moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem whether he is a “Zionist” and he will think you’re crazy. Anti-Zionism has been part of the very fabric of Hasidic Judaism for a long time, even now in muted form. But somehow without abandoning that, they found a way to support Israel and deem left-wing anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism, while their form of anti-Zionism is protecting Judaism.

The Trumpization of Hasidic Jewry should not be surprising and it can be thought of as the byproduct of multiculturalism’s enabling. When Hasidic groups can enter the public square without compromising their theological and ideological commitments—that is, without a “liberal social contract”—they can easily be attracted to right-wing reactionary movements. They will support the Czar over Napoleon.

In earlier times, as Shneur Zalman of Liady suggested, they had to compromise their material wealth for the sake of spiritual survival. In America that’s no longer necessary. They can have both and in addition they can partner with a segment of the majority (white evangelicals) that has ostensibly found its own tacit acceptance of the Jews through its own version of Zionism. Just as Hasidim can be anti-Zionist and pro-Israel, evangelicals can be antisemitic and pro-Israel. It’s not very provocative to say that when Hasidic ideology, founded on the kabbalistic tradition, becomes politicized, it can easily support a kind of autocracy—as long as they are the beneficiaries.

On this reading, the origin of Hasidic Trumpism may be Schneerson himself. It was Schneerson who believed Hasidic Jews could enter the public square without sacrificing any of their ideological positions. He couldn’t have predicted Trump but he enabled the Hasidic support of a candidate not merely as Jews, but as “Americans,” while holding onto views that reflect a Jewish experience of the old world.

Schneerson’s success is undeniable, but we may be seeing the dark side of that success in Hasidic Trumpism. Chabad has been adept at presenting its Jewish vision in the form of a sweetened Judaism to non-religious Jews and to the world more generally. But the support of a political figure who expresses a different form of chauvinism is telling in regards to how the deep-seated ideological core of Chabad, and Hasidism more generally, remains operational.

Source: How Did Hasidic Jewry Become a Stronghold of Trumpism?

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The Importance Of Immigrants For The Future Of Tech

2020/12/02 Leave a comment

As noted frequently and likely that the incoming Biden administration will reverse many of the counter-productive Trump administration policies:

The importance of migrants was underlined during the Covid-19 crisis when it was revealed that the founders of both BioNTech and Moderna, two of the companies at the forefront of the development of a vaccine against the virus, are immigrants to the United States and Germany respectively.

This should perhaps come as no surprise. After all, I wrote recentlyabout the importance of immigrants for jobs, after new researchfrom Kellogg School of Management showed that immigrants actually create a huge number of jobs by virtue of their entrepreneurial abilities.

Wharton research further elaborates on this point by pointing out that immigrant founders not only create jobs, but also bring considerable finance with them. The authors state that cross-border VC investment is now at record levels, with this in large part due to the increasingly international nature of entrepreneurship.

Driving AI

It’s perhaps no surprise, therefore, that recent research from MIT’ CSAIL lab has shown that while American continues to lead the way in the development of artificial intelligence, much of the actual breakthroughs are driven by foreign-born scientists.

The researchers assessed improvements made to the key sections of AI over the past 70 years, and found that around two-thirds of the gains in that time were delivered by researchers at North American universities. What is important, however, is that in the last 30 years, over 75% of these breakthroughs have come from foreign-born scientists.

“If we want the United States to continue to be ground zero for computer science, we need to make sure that our policies make it easy to continue to bring host international researchers to join our institutions,” the researchers say.

A broken pipeline

Research from Cornell suggests, however, that this is a pipeline that is increasingly dysfunctional. The paper highlights how despite many foreign-born Ph.D. graduates applying for jobs at tech startups, and indeed receiving offers to work for them, a large number of them fail to actually take up those jobs due to visa issues.

Instead, those people were much more likely to work at larger tech companies who have the resources and expertise to help them navigate the Kafka like H-1B and permanent residency process.

It’s a situation that has also been chronicled by researchers from Georgetown University, who found that restrictive immigration policies are hampering the ability of American firms to recruit and retain the kind of AI talent they need.

“Historically, immigrants have helped America lead the world in technological innovation,” the authors say. “Artificial intelligence is no exception. Foreign-born talent fuels the U.S. AI sector at every level, from student researchers in academic labs to foreign and naturalized workers in leading companies.”

The study reveals that foreign-born talent plugs a crucial hole in the AI talent marketplace, with the hole likely to persist and even grow in the coming years. A laborious and out-of-date immigration policy is thus hindering the competitiveness of American AI firms because they cannot recruit or retain the talent they need to thrive.

Fragile ground

This could have profound implications for the hegemony of Western nations in the development of AI. The MIT researchers highlight that while residents of Europe and North America making up just 15% of the global population, they’ve contributed over 75% of the breakthroughs in AI.

The free movement of people has been crucial to that, as people with considerable natural talent have been able to move to countries where that talent not only has the opportunity to flourish, but the peer group to help support their work.

This was emphasized clearly by research from McKinsey a few years ago, which highlighted that 35% of the 247 million or so people who live outside their country of birth are highly skilled migrants with at least a tertiary education. What’s more, these migrants are typically significantly more qualified than the native population.

What’s more, research from the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy goes further still and directly measures the impact of migrants on innovation. It shows that bringing in talent from abroad not only helps with the birth of new products and phasing out of older ones, but also has an impact on corporate profits and consumer wellbeing.

“We found companies with higher rates of H-1B workers increased product reallocation–the ability for companies to create new products and replace outdated ones, which in turn, grows revenue,” the authors say. “This discourse could have far reaching implications for U.S. policy, the profitability of firms, the welfare of workers, and the potential for innovation in the economy as a whole.”

Brain drain

The findings come at a time when countries such as the United Kingdom and United States have been gripped by populist politicians who have risen to power in large part due to opposition to immigration. Recent research from Vienna University of Economics and Business highlights how the “hostile environment” created in the U.K. has been driving foreign-born scientists from their shores, with a particular exodus occurring since the Brexit referendum in 2016.

A similar picture was painted of the U.S. by research from Ohio State University, which revealed that a growing number of Chinese researchers are leaving the country and taking their ideas and intellect with them.

The study found that around 16,000 researchers have returned to China from overseas in the last few years, with 4,500 leaving the United States alone. That’s roughly twice the number who were leaving per year in 2010. It’s a trend that is helping to turn China into a true scientific powerhouse.

The West has undoubtedly been a driving force in the development of AI over the past 70 years, but if restrictive immigration policies continue to dominate, it is highly likely that other regions will drive the next generation of AI.

Source: The Importance Of Immigrants For The Future Of Tech

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128 Tricky Questions That Could Stand Between You and U.S. Citizenship

2020/12/01 Leave a comment

One of the better commentaries on the new test, designed to exclude, not include:

Take it from me, a noncitizen, there is much to learn from the naturalization test, one of the final hurdles an immigrant must clear to become a citizen.

It’s pretty tough actually, particularly the new and expanded version of the civics test that is to go into effect on Dec. 1. To those of us living under The Stephen Miller School of Exclusion, this is one more barrier to an immigrant’s quest to live here. The questions and answers are online now. I’ve been practicing in a variety of American accents.

The latest test has 128 civics questions about American government and history. Just getting to take the test usually means you’ve made it through an obstacle course involving reams of paperwork, thousands of dollars in lawyer and government fees, years of legal residency, a biometrics appointment and an English proficiency test. The questions come in the form of an oral test where an officer from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S.C.I.S., asks the would-be citizen to answer 20 of the 128 civics questions; if she gets 12 right, she passes. After that, all she needs to do is pick up her paperwork. Then she can pledge allegiance to the flag and decide which season of “Real Housewives” to watch to truly understand this complex nation.

The latest test is a jump from the current one, which requires you to study only 100 questions, and answer 10 of them, with 6 correct answers, to pass. The Trump administration has left almost no part of the immigration system untouched. It made changes large and small, from thundering bans of entire nationalities to insidious but potent administrative changes like this one. However innocuous some changes may seem, they illuminate the end goal: curbing legal immigration.

As with many Trumpian ideas, the seeds were there all along. The Naturalization Act of 1906 first decreed that citizens-to-be must speak English, and while English is not the official language of the United States, most immigrants today still have to pass an English proficiency test. The civics test is carried out only in English.

I’m a native English speaker, but I still find some questions difficult to understand. And unlike the study guide online, the questions are not multiple choice. That means that one day, if I get to take the test, I will have to try to keep a straight face as I look into another human being’s eyes and try to answer the question, “Why is the Electoral College important?”

Some people have an easier ride. If you are 65 or older and have 20 years of permanent residency under your belt, you are required to answer fewer questions. This makes me feel better about the substantial errors made by the 66-year-old senator-elect from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville. In an interview this month in The Alabama Daily News, Mr. Tuberville got the three branches of the federal government wrong and misidentified the reason the United States fought in World War II. To be fair, Mr. Tuberville played football for a long time. It is my understanding that this extremely American game involves repeated bashes to the head, one of which is bound to knock out some civics knowledge.

Speaking of senators, one of the more sinister changes to the civics test is the answer to the question, “Who does a U.S. Senator represent?” The only acceptable answer has been changed from all people of their state to citizens of their state. I’m just a person, not a citizen. Am I not worthy of representation? There was a whole kerfuffle about taxation without representation back in the day, I believe.

Simone Hanlon Shook is worried about these changes. “It’s just really punitive to people that don’t have advanced degrees and it’s not in their first language,” she told me. She said she was not worried about passing her own test when she took it on Oct. 7. It was the shorter and simpler one. Plus, she is a high school history teacher. Originally from Ireland, Ms. Hanlon Shook lives in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and in past years used the U.S.C.I.S. questions to quiz her high school students as she waited her turn to take the real thing. “The idea was: if you weren’t a citizen, would you pass this test? And a lot of them wouldn’t.”

Her turn finally came during a pandemic, so the U.S.C.I.S. officer brought her into a room with an iPad, and then he went to the room right next to hers and conducted the interview virtually. She got 100 percent of the questions right and on Oct. 23 she was presented with her citizenship papers and a small American flag during a drive-through ceremony in a parking lot beside the Albany airport. The next day, she told me, she voted in the presidential election.

One day I hope to do the same, so I’m taking practice questions when I can. This one caught me out. “What is Alexander Hamilton famous for?” He’s famous for his cool ponytail and for being a breakout star on Broadway, right? Wrong. Apparently he’s famous for being “one of the writers of the Federalist papers.” Not sure what those are, but they sound serious.

Another one is “Name one example of an American innovation.” Voodoo-flavored Zapp’s chips spring to mind, as does unearned confidence. However, neither is included in the list of acceptable answers. Instead: light bulbs, skyscrapers and landing on the moon.

Hernan Prieto is the citizenship program coordinator at Irish Community Services, a nonprofit in Chicago that provides immigration and social services to immigrants of any nationality in the Midwest. Part of his job is preparing immigrants for the civics test. Unlike Senator-elect Tuberville, his students usually get the question about the branches of government right. They are also familiar with some of the names on the test, he told me. They know who Martin Luther King Jr. is and why he is important. Dates trip them up, though.

A green card holder from Argentina, Mr. Prieto hopes to apply for naturalization next year, and he told me he appreciates what he learns alongside other immigrants. Most crucially, studying civics informs would-be Americans of what they stand to gain and what they need to give if they hope to live up to this nation’s earliest motto. They learn that motto too; it’s “E Pluribus Unum” or “Out of many, one.” They learn that equality is promised by the Constitution, that nobody is above the law and that it is a civic duty to vote.

Mr. Prieto treasures that knowledge, but is not convinced that the test itself is helpful. “I don’t know that we need to have a formal test, with 128 questions that you need to learn, and get 12 of them right,” he said. “Do we really need that? What is important for a new citizen is to know their rights and their responsibilities. That is what levels them with other citizens.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/opinion/us-citizenship-test.html

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Universities urge Biden to end curbs on foreign students

2020/11/30 Leave a comment

Not surprising and warranted with respect to the curbs:

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education (ACE), has written to United States President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris on behalf of 43 US university associations calling on them to move to ensure that American colleges and universities are “once again, the destination of choice for the world’s best international students and scholars”.

To accomplish this aim, Mitchell says the Biden administration should move to: 

• Withdraw the proposed regulations that would limit an international student’s ‘duration of status’ and create a fixed duration of admission. Mitchell says there is no evidence to suggest that such a restriction is required or that the issues raised cannot be addressed through the existing Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

“The amount of time the Trump administration proposes to give students is less than the average amount of time it takes an international student to complete his or her education. Such a policy is not fair to international students or institutions,” Mitchell says. 

• Withdraw the interim final rules and the proposed rule that make it harder and more expensive for individuals to receive H-1B visas. These new requirements imposed by both the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security were finalised without allowing for public comment, Mitchell says. 

“The business and higher education communities vigorously oppose the proposed rules, and two lawsuits have already been filed to block them. In addition, the proposed rule regarding subject caps will make it difficult for recent international students graduating from US institutions to participate in the H-1B programme.” 

• Make clear that the Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme remains in place as it was at the end of the Obama administration. The Trump administration’s constant signalling that it might change OPT created a serious disincentive for students to enrol in post-secondary education in the United States, Mitchell says. 

Most international students see the OPT programme as a transitional stage to obtaining an H-1B visa. More than 5,000 assistant professors and over 1,700 research associates hold H-1B visas, according to an online visa tracker. The H-1B visa programme is one of the very few pathways for foreign-born researchers to remain in the United States on a long-term basis. 

The demands are among a list of steps that Mitchell says “could and should” be undertaken quickly by the new US administration once it is sworn in in January.

In the open letter, ACE President Mitchell says: “First and foremost, we welcome and applaud the announcement that the Biden administration will move quickly to reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protections that the Trump administration repealed. 

“We hope that your administration will take steps to make the DACA protections permanent and will work with you to support whatever measures are necessary to accomplish this worthy goal.”

An estimated 450,000 undocumented immigrants are college students and about half of those are eligible for the DACA programme.

In addition to DACA, Mitchell said the associations believe that the Biden administration should take immediate action in a number of areas to terminate, revise or replace a number of decisions that the Trump administration has put in place regarding higher education. 

He called on the Biden administration to work with all stakeholders to address “aspects of the Title IX regulations [the law against sex discrimination in education provision] that are deeply problematic and that micromanage campus processes in an inflexible manner and undermine college and university efforts to effectively, fairly and compassionately address the problem of campus sexual assault”. 

In particular, Mitchell said, the administration “should eliminate the mandate for a live hearing with cross examination, which could have a chilling effect on the willingness of survivors to come forward and raises serious concerns about re-traumatisation”.

Foreign gift reporting requirements

He also demanded a halting of the expanded reporting requirements, including the new Information Collection Request (ICR) and Notice of Interpretation (NOI) on Section 117, which relates to conditions of transparency and reporting of institutions’ foreign gifts or contracts worth US$250,000 or more. 

The higher education associations regard the new interpretation imposed by the Department of Education as part of an effort to expand those reporting requirements beyond existing requirements. The ACE letter says the Higher Education Act prescribes the information that institutions are required to disclose, and, in the absence of a regulation, the Education Department has no authority to impose new requirements beyond those in statute. 

The letter also accuses the Trump administration of launching “politically motivated” investigations of higher education institutions conducted by political appointees. Examples given include investigations launched by the department’s Office of the General Counsel of “racism at Princeton” and “academic freedom at UCLA”.

Mitchell said: “The [Education] Department’s response to instances of insufficient institutional reporting should have focused on reporting remediation to enhance the intended transparency rather than launching investigations that forced institutions to invest scarce resources in responding to burdensome document requests that sought information beyond the statutory authority.”

Limits on the effectiveness of student aid

Mitchell called for the withdrawal of the interim final rules regarding the eligibility of higher education students for funds under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security or CARES Act. Mitchell said this rule “contradicts congressional intent as to which students should be eligible for the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund and limits the effectiveness of such aid”.

In order to “enhance the integrity” of student aid programmes, he called on the Biden administration to rewrite the rules to protect the risk to students and taxpayers and ensure that students’ financial aid eligibility is limited to “quality programmes”.

The letter calls for the reinstatement of Obama-era guidance on the use of race in admissions and the immediate termination of the Department of Justice’s “unprecedented demand that Yale University cease any consideration of race in its admissions practices”. 

Mitchell says: “There is no evidence that Yale is in violation of Supreme Court decisions that bear on this issue.”

Similarly, ACE calls on the Department of Justice to withdraw its support for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. 

“The trial and appellate court decisions, both of which found for Harvard, have established a clear and compelling record that Harvard is in no way violating the law,” Mitchell says.

The letter also calls for the repeal of the Executive Order on Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency and Accountability at Colleges and Universities and the portion of regulations related to that order included in the Education Department’s 23 September 2020 final rule, “Direct Grant Programs, State-Administered Formula Grant Programs…” 

Mitchell said: “Colleges and universities are committed to free inquiry and academic freedom. It is improper for federal officials, including those at the Education Department, to insert their own political judgments about what speech should or should not be permitted on campus. 

“In fact, federal law specifically prohibits the Education Department from interfering in academic matters.”

Mitchell also demanded the repeal of the president’s Executive Order on Race and Sex Stereotyping. “Needless to say, colleges and universities are totally opposed to race and sex stereotyping, but the executive order is sweepingly overbroad and has chilled the implementation of critical diversity training programmes that ensure more respectful and productive work and learning environments,” Mitchell writes.

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20201128102119141

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Hate crimes in US reach highest level in more than a decade

2020/11/18 Leave a comment

Of note (still less than the previous high in 2008) so not all attributable to Trump. Canadian police-reported hate crimes 2019 numbers not yet out:

Hate crimes in the U.S. rose to the highest level in more than a decade as federal officials also recorded the highest number of hate-motivated killings since the FBI began collecting that data in the early 1990s, according to an FBI report released Monday.

There were 51 hate crime murders in 2019, which includes 22 people who were killed in a shooting that targeted Mexicans at a Walmart in the border city of El Paso, Texas, the report said. The suspect in that August 2019 shooting, which left two dozen other people injured, was charged with both state and federal crimes in what authorities said was an attempt to scare Hispanics into leaving the United States.

There were 7,314 hate crimes last year, up from 7,120 the year before — and approaching the 7,783 of 2008. The FBI’s annual report defines hate crimes as those motivated by bias based on a person’s race, religion or sexual orientation, among other categories.

Some of the 2019 increases may be the result of better reporting by police departments, but law enforcement officials and advocacy groups don’t doubt that hate crimes are on the rise. The Justice Department has for years been specifically prioritizing hate crime prosecutions.

The data also shows there was a nearly 7% increase in religion-based hate crimes, with 953 reports of crimes targeting Jews and Jewish institutions last year, up from 835 the year before. The FBI said the number of hate crimes against African Americans dropped slightly to 1,930, from 1,943.

Anti-Hispanic hate crimes, however, rose to 527 in 2019, from 485 in 2018. And the total number of hate crimes based on a person’s sexual orientation stayed relatively stable, with one fewer crime reported last year, compared with the year before, though there were 20 more hate crimes against gay men reported.

As the data was made public on Monday, advocacy groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, called on Congress and law enforcement agencies across the U.S. to improve data collection and reporting of hate crimes. Critics have long warned that the data may be incomplete, in part because it is based on voluntary reporting by police agencies across the country.

Last year, only 2,172 law enforcement agencies out of about 15,000 participating agencies across the country reported hate crime data to the FBI, the bureau said. And while the number of agencies reporting hate crimes increased, the number of agencies participating in the program actually dropped from the year before. A large number of police agencies appeared not to submit any hate crime data, which has been a consistent struggle for Justice Department officials.

“The total severity of the impact and damage caused by hate crimes cannot be fully measured without complete participation in the FBI’s data collection process,” the Anti-Defamation League’s president, Jonathan Greenblatt, said in a statement.

An Associated Press investigation in 2016 found that more than 2,700 city police and county sheriff’s departments across the country had not submitted a single hate crime report for the FBI’s annual crime tally during the previous six years.

Greenblatt also said America must “remove the barriers that too often prevent people in marginalized communities – the individuals most likely to suffer hate crimes – from reporting hate-based incidents,” a sentiment shared by other advocates.

“The FBI’s report is another reminder that we have much work to do to address hate in America,” said Margaret Huang, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Source: Hate crimes in US reach highest level in more than a decade

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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