an alliance of university, community, and government partners dedicated to fostering welcoming communities and promoting the integration of immigrants and minorities across Canada
The Media Roundup provides links to recent and archived articles, in both English and French, on immigration and diversity appearing in the national and local news. Some international content is also included. Articles are updated weekly.
CBC – Francophone Immigrant Entrepreneurs Get Helping Hand
A group in Greater Moncton is helping francophone immigrants become Canadian entrepreneurs. Last month, the New Brunswick, Ontario and federal commissioners of official languages were calling on the federal and provincial governments to do more to increase immigration in francophone communities outside of Quebec. They called the francophone immigration situation “worrisome.” 3+ Corporation, the economic development corporation for Moncton, Riverview and Dieppe, is offering workshops, teaching recent immigrants the ins and outs of doing business in Canada. It is also hosting events to help newcomers meet more established members of the community to help encourage them to stay, said Belén Welch, the organization’s manager of business immigration services.
Radio Canada International – Le casse-tête identitaire des enfants d’immigrants
Qu’ont en commun Rim Mohsen, Samer Najari, Sonia Djelidi, Rima El-Khouri, Youssef Shoufan et Jean-Pierre Gorkynian et Inès Talbi? Ils sont tous des « deuxièmes générations » c’est-à-dire qu’ils sont arrivés tout jeunes au Canada ou sont nés ici de parents immigrants. Si certains se sont rapidement identifiés à la société d’accueil, si d’autres ont conservé un fort sentiment d’appartenance à leur communauté d’origine, il y en a aussi qui se reconnaissent dans les deux cultures. Dans le cadre du Salon de la culture organisé par le Festival du Monde Arabe, une table ronde s’intéresse aux « Casse-têtes identitaires, deuxièmes générations dans un Québec pluriel » réunissant les personnes nommées plus haut. Hybrides culturels par excellence, comment ces jeunes se définissent-ils? Voilà une des questions posée lors de l’événement présenté à Montréal le 7 novembre.
Guardian – UK Gains £20bn from European Migrants, UCL Economists Reveal
European migrants to the UK are not a drain on Britain’s finances and pay out far more in taxes than they receive in state benefits, a new study has revealed. The research by two leading migration economists at University College also reveals that Britain is uniquely successful, even more than Germany, in attracting the most highly skilled and highly educated migrants in Europe. The study, the Fiscal Impact of Immigration to the UK, published in the Economic Journal, reveals that more than 60% of new migrants from western and southern Europe are now university graduates. The educational levels of east Europeans who come to Britain are also improving with 25% of recent arrivals having completed a degree compared with 24% of the UK-born workforce. It says that European migrants made a net contribution of £20bn to UK public finances between 2000 and 2011. Those from the 15 countries which made up the EU before 2004, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, contributed 64% – £15bn more in taxes than they received in welfare – while east European migrants contributed 12%, equivalent to £5bn more.
Global News – Deaths in Detention: CBSA’s Fatal Failure to Learn From its Mistakes
Canadians know the story of Lucia Vega Jimenez, the Mexican woman who hanged herself in a Canada Border Services cell in Vancouver’s airport. But not because of the people responsible for her wellbeing: We know her story because members of the Mexican-Canadian community came forward and made it impossible to ignore. Until recently, Canada’s Border Services Agency did not tell anyone when people – refugee claimants, immigrant detainees – died in its custody. […] At least nine people have died in immigration detention since 2000, most of them while held in a provincial jail or non-CBSA facility. In its efforts to learn more about people who have died while being held in immigration custody, Global News contacted CBSA, Ontario and Quebec’s coroners’ officers, Ontario’s Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, the Immigration and Refugee Board and an American police department, as well as filing several Access to Information requests and researching media reports.
Global News – Canada’s Unwanted: Non-Citizens Paid to Leave, Jailed Without Charge, Die in Secret
As a country we’ve crafted a narrative of welcoming persecuted persons. A federal government website, “A History of Refuge,” showcases centuries of asylum-seekers, from Quakers to Rwandans, and Canada’s Nansen Refugee Award in 1986. And we rely more than ever not only on immigrants, but on people who leave their home countries to work here for short periods of time under strict restrictions and with limited rights. But thousands of non-citizens deemed undesirable find a very different Canada than that advertised. […] We wanted to find out how Canada treats those it doesn’t want – or those whose fate and right to be in this country remain undecided. We found systems rife with arbitrary opacity and questionable practices. Canada’s detention practices violate multiple guidelines issued by the UN High Commission on refugees. This Global News investigation illustrates multiple questionable practices in Canada’s treatment of asylum-seekers and immigration detainees.
Global News – Canada Pays Thousands of Roma to Abandon Refugee Appeals, Leave Country
More than 3,600 people Canada paid to abandon their refugee claims and leave the country since July, 2012, federal statistics show. And data Global News obtained under federal access-to-information laws indicates most of these refugee claimants are Roma. Citizens of Hungary, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia make up 61 per cent of the total of people in the program – more than 1,800 by March of this year. Immigration and Refugee Minister Chris Alexander refused to speak with Global News for this story. “The [Canadian Border Services Agency] will not speculate on why these are the top five countries of return,” CBSA spokesperson Line Guibert-Wolf said in an e-mail. […] Under the Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration Program, unsuccessful refugee claimants who agree to abandon the appeal process are given airfare home, which on average costs $1,500, and “in-kind reintegration assistance” to a maximum of $2,000. […] The payments are administered by the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, which describes the program as “politically more palatable and less sensitive than the return of émigrés in shackles.” Since Canada began the program in 2012, it has spent a total of $7.5 million paying would-be refugees to leave.
