By Nancy Conroy
In San Diego County, California, a firestorm has erupted over plans to build a Blackwater mercenary training camp in the hills behind Potrero, a remote area east of the city. The residents of San Diego are opposing the idea on the grounds that firing ranges are noisy and mercenaries would be undesirable neighbors. So far the controversy has been a localized, "not in my backyard," type of debate involving planning commissions and citizen's action groups.
Americans tend to think in an American way, and therefore nobody seems to have noticed that the location of this camp is right on the US-Mexico border, just a few miles from Tecate.
From an international perspective, there are a number of geopolitical reasons that could explain why this border location was selected. This is probably not merely an issue for the local planning commission, given that the idea of mercenaries along the border has broader international implications.
Blackwater USA is a private army based in Louisiana that has received billions of dollars in US government contracts to assist with the Iraq war. These "contractors" are highly trained ex-military specialists, many of whom come from foreign countries with poor human rights records.
Blackwater, at its website, identifies itself as "... not simply a 'private security company.' We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations firm who provides turnkey solutions."
The presence of Blackwater in Iraq has generated controversy over the concept of an "outsourced" war, using mercenaries instead of regular US troops. The mercenaries do not answer to US military commanders, their conduct is not governed by the Geneva Convention, and they answer only to the people who are signing their paychecks.
Critics often compare them to the Nazi brownshirts.
A Blackwater camp on the border may be a covert attempt to militarize the border without going through congressional oversight or public debate. A so-called "training camp" could probably also function as an operational base. Perhaps Blackwater will obtain government contracts to patrol the border, gradually edging out US agents and putting border security into the hands of a private army away from public scrutiny.
And Blackwater could run immigrant detention camps using the same methods they use in the Middle East. Even if this is not the plan, the Mexicans would have good reason to suspect this motivation.
The proposed training camp is located near international drug supply routes controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel. The remote, mountainous terrain is like Afghanistan, where Blackwater has years of experience running covert operations.
Six miles from the proposed Blackwater camp, northern Mexico has a serious problem with "Men in Black" who coincidentally look, dress, and act just like the Blackwater people. In Mexico, the Men in Black are kidnappers, corrupt police officers, fake federal agents, or Zetas, a narco-paramilitary group. Although Americans may still be swallowing the argument that Blackwater is a "military auxiliary" outfit, the Mexicans are not fooled about who the Men in Black are, what they do, and who they work for. That these same people are now camped out on the US border, or are somehow involved in border enforcement, will lack credibility in Mexico.
Since the Iraq war, business at Blackwater has been booming, which is why they need the new "Blackwater West" facility. Most of Blackwater's contracts come from the US government, at least those that are publicly disclosed. But, Blackwater is a private army that is available to run "corporate security" missions for anyone that can afford it. This suggests another possible motivation for the border location: to serve emerging markets in northern Mexico.
There are surely plenty of possible clients with money in the Baja California area who need special operations. Since Blackwater personnel look just like the Mexican Men in Black, they should have no trouble blending in.
Another possible reason for the border location is the potential to perform "extraordinary renditions" into Mexico. "Extraordinary renditions" is a euphemism for off-the-record prisoner processing, the subjects of which are known in Latin America as "los desaparecidos" ("the disappeared"). Blackwater conducts extraordinary renditions in the Middle East, quietly transferring prisoners to third countries where interrogation techniques are not monitored. From their new border location, Blackwater could perform extraordinary renditions into northern Mexico far away from prying eyes.
Blackwater has said that the reason for the site selection is to be close to the San Diego area, where many branches of the US military need extra training. Still, the location so close to the US-Mexico border raises international issues that local San Diego citizen's groups are not aware of and generally do not think about. Americans should consider the possible international dimensions, and responsible Mexican citizens should evaluate the potential impact of this camp on their own country.
As well, if Mexicans were more informed about this issue, the specter of mercenaries along the border has the potential to create an international controversy.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/06/361609.shtml
Monday, July 2, 2007
A flight from strife right into dilemma
Refugees who break laws to enter the U.S. bring court system, supporters into conflict
By KATE GURNETT, Staff writer
First published: Tuesday, June 19, 2007
ALBANY -- When Linda Malenge was arrested on an Amtrak train at the northern U.S. border last year -- with phony Canadian and Greek passports and no U.S. visa -- she'd lost more than her proper ID.
Her father was dead, murdered at home by government troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her brother was missing, presumed killed. Her husband had already escaped to the United States.
A civil war was raging in her homeland, claiming 4 million lives. In October 2005, five men broke into Malenge's house and fractured her ankle. They sought her uncle-in-law, a bodyguard to late president Laurent Kabila. If we don't find him, they told her, we'll be back for you.
"The only thought in my head was to flee," Malenge said in a telephone interview last week. "Things were quickly unraveling." Seeking a passport could have prompted her arrest or worse. She took her 5-year-old son to a safe location and then fled the country.
This week, the 24-year-old mother will be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Albany for using a forged passport to cross the U.S. border. Ultimately, she could be deported to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where executions, unexplained disappearances and government torture still occur.
Her case raises questions about the efficacy of the United States as a safe haven for refugees of war and terror. It reflects a dilemma faced by other exiles who use fake documents to escape violence: Are they refugees or criminals?
The U.S. attorney's office in Albany says Malenge is a criminal. Prosecutors won felony convictions against her and another woman, Ramatulai Barry of Guinea. Both Barry and her husband were imprisoned and tortured in Guinea and Barry was raped by guards before she escaped, court records state. Barry, 29, was arrested last September while crossing the border at Champlain with a false passport. She, too, was trying to join her husband, who is in New York City.
Two federal judges -- Judge Gary Sharpe and Judge Thomas McAvoy -- agreed, finding they violated U.S. law.
But their attorney, federal public defender Gene Primomo, says he may appeal. Both women are protected by the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention and the subsequent 1967 Protocol on refugees, he argues. That international law protects asylum-seekers who commit illegal acts "consistent with traveling as a refugee," such as using false documents, Primomo says. And it also allows refugees to make a political asylum claim before they are prosecuted for illegal entry.
"Blindly prosecuting these women in light of their circumstances is a travesty and a waste of government resources," Primomo said. He had asked the U.S. government to send the women to immigration court while retaining the right to prosecute after the asylum issue was decided.
Malenge "is the poster child for what this treaty is supposed to do," Primomo said.
U.S. District Court Judge Gary Sharpe rejected Primomo's argument, saying the treaty doesn't preclude prosecution, though it advocates restraint. Malenge can still apply for asylum, Sharpe said.
Malenge's circumstances don't "excuse the deception she employed at the border," Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Grogan said in court papers. Before getting any "immigration benefits . . . she must first account for the conduct that she displayed at the border."
Both sides say Malenge and Barry are rarities -- two women trying to join their husbands by sneaking in before requesting asylum -- among the many people nabbed for falsifying documents at the border.
Many people request asylum at the border without trying to enter illegally, Grogan said. "We hear of all kinds of terrible situations and we know there are desperate people," he added. "But it doesn't excuse criminal conduct."
Because such cases are rare, Primomo said, it would be easy to divert them to federal immigration court, where deportation is the toughest penalty, rather than federal criminal court. "Very few people arrested at the border claim they are political refugees. When it comes up, it's fairly obvious that criminal prosecution is unnecessary and should be prohibited or delayed," he said.
While the women could face prison time, it is likely that Malenge will be sentenced to time served -- five months in Washington County Jail -- Primomo said. But he worries that the felony conviction could prejudice her asylum case.
Barry's sentencing is set for Sept. 10 in Albany federal court. Both Malenge and Barry are seeking asylum in immigration court.
What's likely to happen there is anyone's guess.
A recent Georgetown University study of 140,000 immigration court decisions found huge disparities in asylum judgments. Colombians, for example, had an 88 percent chance of winning asylum from one Miami judge, but a 5 percent chance from another in the same court. Someone fleeing persecution in China would find a 75 percent chance of approval in Orlando, Fla., but a mere 7 percent chance in Atlanta, Ga. Asylum is granted 44 percent more often by female immigration judges, according to the study.
The controversial immigration proposals debated in Congress last week would make asylum applicants convicted of using some fake passports ineligible for asylum, according to Philip Schrag, who directs the asylum law clinic at Georgetown University and headed the study with two other law professors.
Many countries refuse to issue passports to political or religious dissidents, leaving them to use doctored documents, Schrag says. People fleeing aren't likely to try to get the proper paperwork, a reality reflected in the United Nations protocol.
A lack of legal alternatives for refugees threatens "the protection that America offers to people who flee their homelands to escape persecution by oppressive governments," Schrag wrote in a May column in The Washington Post.
Malenge said she remains hopeful. But she's surprised by how few Americans seem to comprehend the plight of refugees.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, "human rights do not exist at all," she said. "There is so, so, so much injustice. Police protecting you? That does not exist. Anyone could be a killer, including the police. There is no security. I know so many families that had to flee."
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=599031
By KATE GURNETT, Staff writer
First published: Tuesday, June 19, 2007
ALBANY -- When Linda Malenge was arrested on an Amtrak train at the northern U.S. border last year -- with phony Canadian and Greek passports and no U.S. visa -- she'd lost more than her proper ID.
Her father was dead, murdered at home by government troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her brother was missing, presumed killed. Her husband had already escaped to the United States.
A civil war was raging in her homeland, claiming 4 million lives. In October 2005, five men broke into Malenge's house and fractured her ankle. They sought her uncle-in-law, a bodyguard to late president Laurent Kabila. If we don't find him, they told her, we'll be back for you.
"The only thought in my head was to flee," Malenge said in a telephone interview last week. "Things were quickly unraveling." Seeking a passport could have prompted her arrest or worse. She took her 5-year-old son to a safe location and then fled the country.
This week, the 24-year-old mother will be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Albany for using a forged passport to cross the U.S. border. Ultimately, she could be deported to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where executions, unexplained disappearances and government torture still occur.
Her case raises questions about the efficacy of the United States as a safe haven for refugees of war and terror. It reflects a dilemma faced by other exiles who use fake documents to escape violence: Are they refugees or criminals?
The U.S. attorney's office in Albany says Malenge is a criminal. Prosecutors won felony convictions against her and another woman, Ramatulai Barry of Guinea. Both Barry and her husband were imprisoned and tortured in Guinea and Barry was raped by guards before she escaped, court records state. Barry, 29, was arrested last September while crossing the border at Champlain with a false passport. She, too, was trying to join her husband, who is in New York City.
Two federal judges -- Judge Gary Sharpe and Judge Thomas McAvoy -- agreed, finding they violated U.S. law.
But their attorney, federal public defender Gene Primomo, says he may appeal. Both women are protected by the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention and the subsequent 1967 Protocol on refugees, he argues. That international law protects asylum-seekers who commit illegal acts "consistent with traveling as a refugee," such as using false documents, Primomo says. And it also allows refugees to make a political asylum claim before they are prosecuted for illegal entry.
"Blindly prosecuting these women in light of their circumstances is a travesty and a waste of government resources," Primomo said. He had asked the U.S. government to send the women to immigration court while retaining the right to prosecute after the asylum issue was decided.
Malenge "is the poster child for what this treaty is supposed to do," Primomo said.
U.S. District Court Judge Gary Sharpe rejected Primomo's argument, saying the treaty doesn't preclude prosecution, though it advocates restraint. Malenge can still apply for asylum, Sharpe said.
Malenge's circumstances don't "excuse the deception she employed at the border," Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Grogan said in court papers. Before getting any "immigration benefits . . . she must first account for the conduct that she displayed at the border."
Both sides say Malenge and Barry are rarities -- two women trying to join their husbands by sneaking in before requesting asylum -- among the many people nabbed for falsifying documents at the border.
Many people request asylum at the border without trying to enter illegally, Grogan said. "We hear of all kinds of terrible situations and we know there are desperate people," he added. "But it doesn't excuse criminal conduct."
Because such cases are rare, Primomo said, it would be easy to divert them to federal immigration court, where deportation is the toughest penalty, rather than federal criminal court. "Very few people arrested at the border claim they are political refugees. When it comes up, it's fairly obvious that criminal prosecution is unnecessary and should be prohibited or delayed," he said.
While the women could face prison time, it is likely that Malenge will be sentenced to time served -- five months in Washington County Jail -- Primomo said. But he worries that the felony conviction could prejudice her asylum case.
Barry's sentencing is set for Sept. 10 in Albany federal court. Both Malenge and Barry are seeking asylum in immigration court.
What's likely to happen there is anyone's guess.
A recent Georgetown University study of 140,000 immigration court decisions found huge disparities in asylum judgments. Colombians, for example, had an 88 percent chance of winning asylum from one Miami judge, but a 5 percent chance from another in the same court. Someone fleeing persecution in China would find a 75 percent chance of approval in Orlando, Fla., but a mere 7 percent chance in Atlanta, Ga. Asylum is granted 44 percent more often by female immigration judges, according to the study.
The controversial immigration proposals debated in Congress last week would make asylum applicants convicted of using some fake passports ineligible for asylum, according to Philip Schrag, who directs the asylum law clinic at Georgetown University and headed the study with two other law professors.
Many countries refuse to issue passports to political or religious dissidents, leaving them to use doctored documents, Schrag says. People fleeing aren't likely to try to get the proper paperwork, a reality reflected in the United Nations protocol.
A lack of legal alternatives for refugees threatens "the protection that America offers to people who flee their homelands to escape persecution by oppressive governments," Schrag wrote in a May column in The Washington Post.
Malenge said she remains hopeful. But she's surprised by how few Americans seem to comprehend the plight of refugees.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, "human rights do not exist at all," she said. "There is so, so, so much injustice. Police protecting you? That does not exist. Anyone could be a killer, including the police. There is no security. I know so many families that had to flee."
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=599031
Vidéo: Bato (The Boat)
Combien de personnes ont perdu leurs vies en assayant de fuir leurs
pays a cause des oppressions politiques et économiques?
Voyez les perpectives de Vox Sambou via son nouveau video clip BATO
(Bateau). Dirigé par David Smith, BATO raconte l'histoire d'un jeune
haitien quittant son pays et sa famille en espérant de trouver une vie
meilleur a Miami.
Bato est tres bien recu dans le milieu médiatique et la population en
Haiti et depuis il est en rotation sur plusieurs stations de radios et
des chaines de télévisons en Haiti.
Vox Sambou est basé a Montréal.
Pour voir le vidéo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQakeDq9No4
pays a cause des oppressions politiques et économiques?
Voyez les perpectives de Vox Sambou via son nouveau video clip BATO
(Bateau). Dirigé par David Smith, BATO raconte l'histoire d'un jeune
haitien quittant son pays et sa famille en espérant de trouver une vie
meilleur a Miami.
Bato est tres bien recu dans le milieu médiatique et la population en
Haiti et depuis il est en rotation sur plusieurs stations de radios et
des chaines de télévisons en Haiti.
Vox Sambou est basé a Montréal.
Pour voir le vidéo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQakeDq9No4
New Scrutiny as Immigrants Die in Custody
Sandra M. Kenley was returning home from her native Barbados in 2005 when she was swept into the United States’ fastest-growing form of incarceration, immigration detention.
Seven weeks later, Ms. Kenley died in a rural Virginia jail, where she had complained of not receiving medicine for high blood pressure. She was one of 62 immigrants to die in administrative custody since 2004, according to a new tally by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that counted many more deaths than the 20 previously known.
No government body is charged with accounting for deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of county jails, privately run prisons and federal facilities where more than 27,500 people who are not American citizens are held on any given day while the government decides whether to deport them.
Getting details about those who die in custody is a difficult undertaking left to family members, advocacy groups and lawyers.
But as the immigration detention system balloons to meet demands for stricter enforcement of immigration laws, deaths in custody — and the secrecy and confusion around them — are drawing increased scrutiny from lawmakers and from government investigators.
Spurred by bipartisan reports of abuses in detention, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment to the proposed immigration bill that would establish an office of detention oversight within the Department of Homeland Security. Detention capacity would grow by 20,000 beds, or 73 percent, under the bill, which is expected to be debated again today in the Senate.
Complaints focus on a lack of independent oversight and failures to enforce standards for medical care, suicide prevention and access to legal help.
The inspector general in the Department of Homeland Security recently announced a “special review” of two deaths, including that of a Korean woman at a privately run detention center in Albuquerque. Fellow detainees told a lawyer that the woman, Young Sook Kim, had pleaded for medical care for weeks, but received scant attention until her eyes yellowed and she stopped eating.
Ms. Kim died of pancreatic cancer in federal custody on Sept. 11, 2005, a day after she was taken to a hospital.
Some of the sharpest criticism of the troubled system has come from officials at one of the largest detention centers in the country, York County Prison in Pennsylvania.
“The Department of Homeland Security has made it difficult, if not impossible, to meet the constitutional requirements of providing adequate health care to inmates that have a serious need for that care,” the York County Prison’s warden, Thomas Hogan, wrote in a court affidavit last year.
Officials with the immigration agency say that some deaths are inevitable, and that sufficient outside scrutiny comes from local medical examiners. Detention expanded by more than 32 percent last year, and the average length of stay was cut to 35 days from 89, said Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman.
“We spend $98 million annually to provide medical care for people in our custody,” Ms. Zuieback said. “Anybody who violates our national immigration law is going to get the same treatment by I.C.E. regardless of their medical condition.”
She declined to release information about the 62 detention deaths since 2004, including names, dates, locations or causes.
Twenty deaths were reported over the same period in a recent briefing paper for the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants from a list compiled by civil liberties lawyers from reports by relatives, advocates and the news media.
Detention standards were adopted by the immigration agency in 2000, but are not legally enforceable, unlike rules for the treatment of criminal inmates. The Department of Homeland Security has resisted efforts by the American Bar Association to turns the standards into regulations, saying that rulemaking would reduce the agency’s flexibility.
“The deaths bring forward in the worst way the systemwide problems,” said Sunita Patel, a lawyer for Legal Aid who prepared the United Nations briefing paper.
Some advocates of curbs on immigration say the solution is quicker deportations.
“The taxpayer cannot be expected to underwrite the elaborate detention facilities that some of these organizations want,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
In the case of Ms. Kenley, a legal permanent resident of the United States for more than 30 years, detention interrupted her medical care for high blood pressure, a fibroid tumor and uterine bleeding. An autopsy attributed her death to an enlarged heart from chronic hypertensive disease. But a report by emergency medical services said that she had fallen from a top bunk, and that a cellmate had pounded on the door for 20 minutes before guards responded.
Ms. Kenley’s sister, June Everett, said her questions had gone unanswered.
“How did my sister die?” she asked, as Ms. Kenley’s daughter, Nicole, wept. “It’s a whole set of confusion, so who knows, really? And I would like to know.”
Ms. Kenley had been traveling with her 1-year-old granddaughter when she arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport, records show, and she was ordered to return without the baby to discuss two old misdemeanor drug convictions that had surfaced in an airport database.
She obeyed. A transcript shows she admitted a conviction for drug possession in 1984 and one in 2002 for trying to buy a small amount of cocaine. She described a life derailed by drug addiction after 11 years of working in a newspaper mailroom.
“I turned my life around,” Ms. Kenley told the immigration inspector, pointing to three drug-free years after probation and treatment, completion of a nursing course, and legal custody of the granddaughter, Nakita. She also showed that she was taking blood pressure medication and was scheduled for surgery.
The inspector arrested her, invoking the law: two drug-related convictions made her subject to exclusion from the United States.
“I am barely living,” Ms. Kenley later wrote her sister from Pamunkey Regional Jail, in Hanover, Va., “trying to hold on until you get a lawyer to help me.”
She died at Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, Va.
Her only court appearances were by video monitor, waiting for a volunteer lawyer who never came.
Even detainees with legal counsel sometimes do not survive.
Abdoulai Sall, 50, a Guinea-born taxi cab mechanic in Washington with no criminal record, died in detention last December.
Mr. Sall, whose boss of 17 years had sponsored him for a green card, was at an immigration interview with a lawyer, Paul S. Allen, when he was unexpectedly arrested on an old deportation order — part of a legal tangle left when another lawyer abandoned his case in the 1990s, Mr. Allen said.
The case file shows that Mr. Allen’s office urged medical intervention for Mr. Sall, who had been taking medication for a serious kidney ailment at the time of his arrest. While in detention at the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, Va. he complained that he was not getting his medication and that his symptoms were worsening in a barracks-style unit.
Fellow detainees described Mr. Sall huddling next to the unit dryer for warmth, barely able to walk. “The medical staff told him they don’t have what he needs because immigration don’t pay enough money,” one detainee wrote.
The accusation was denied by Lou Barlow, the jail’s superintendent, who said Mr. Sall had received good care, including a visit to the local emergency room.
“We’ve never done anything unethical, illegal or immoral,” Mr. Barlow said.
Autopsy results are still pending.
Some deaths, like Ms. Kim’s, come to light well after the fact. Ms. Kim, a cook of about 60, was swept up in a raid on a massage parlor and detained for a month at the Regional Correctional Center in Albuquerque, a county prison operated by the Cornell Companies, a publicly traded corporation.
Months after her death, a lawyer in Santa Fe, N.M., Brandt Milstein, learned about the case from other Korean detainees, since deported. Mr. Milstein said that under New Mexico law, the death should have been reviewed by the state’s medical inspector, but officials had not reported it as a death in custody.
About two weeks ago — nearly two years after Ms. Kim died — the inspector general’s office called him, Mr. Milstein said. The investigation is now under way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/us/26detain.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Canada’s Policy on Immigrants Brings Backlog
Salman Kureishy said Canada provided little support to immigrants.
By CHRISTOPHER MASON and JULIA PRESTON
TORONTO, June 26 — With an advanced degree in business management from a university in India and impeccable English, Salman Kureishy is precisely the type of foreigner that Canada’s merit-based immigration system was designed to attract.
Yet eight years went by from the time Mr. Kureishy passed his first Canadian immigration test until he moved from India to Canada. Then he had to endure nine months of bureaucratic delays before landing a job in his field in March.
Mr. Kureishy’s experience — and that of Canada’s immigration system — offers a cautionary tale for the United States. Mr. Kureishy came to this country under a system Canada pioneered in the 1960s that favors highly skilled foreigners, by assigning points for education and work experience and accepting those who earn high scores.
A similar point system for the United States is proposed in the immigration bill that bounced back to life on Tuesday, when the Senate reversed a previous stand and brought the bill back to the floor. The vote did not guarantee passage of the bill, which calls for the biggest changes in immigration law in more than 20 years.
The point system has helped Canada compete with the United States and other Western powers for highly educated workers, the most coveted immigrants in high-tech and other cutting-edge industries. But in recent years, immigration lawyers and labor market analysts say, the Canadian system has become an immovable beast, with a backlog of more than 800,000 applications and waits of four years or more.
The system’s bias toward the educated has left some industries crying out for skilled blue-collar workers, especially in western Canada where Alberta’s busy oil fields have generated an economic boom. Studies by the Alberta government show the province could be short by as many as 100,000 workers over the next decade.
In response, some Canadian employers are sidestepping the point system and relying instead on a program initiated in 1998 that allows provincial governments to hand-pick some immigrant workers, and on temporary foreign-worker permits.
“The points system is so inflexible,” said Herman Van Reekum, an immigration consultant in Calgary who helps Alberta employers find workers. “We need low-skill workers and trades workers here, and those people have no hope under the points system.”
Canada accepts about 250,000 immigrants each year, more than doubling the per-capita rate of immigration in the United States, census figures from both countries show. Nearly two-thirds of Canada’s population growth comes from immigrants, according to the 2006 census, compared with the United States, where about 43 percent of the population growth comes from immigration. Approximately half of Canada’s immigrants come through the point system.
Under Canada’s system, 67 points on a 100-point test is a passing score. In addition to education and work experience, aspiring immigrants earn high points for their command of languages and for being between 21 and 49 years old. In the United States, the Senate bill would grant higher points for advanced education, English proficiency and skills in technology and other fields that are in demand. Lower points would be given for the family ties that have been the basic stepping stones of the American immigration system for four decades.
Part of the backlog in Canada can be traced to a provision in the Canadian system that allows highly skilled foreigners to apply to immigrate even if they do not have a job offer. Similarly, the Senate bill would not require merit system applicants to have job offers in the United States, although it would grant additional points to those who do.
Without an employment requirement, Canada has been deluged with applications. In testimony in May before an immigration subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives, Howard Greenberg, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, compared the Canadian system to a bathtub with an open faucet and a clogged drain. “It is not surprising that Canada’s bathtub is overflowing,” Mr. Greenberg said.
Since applications are not screened first by employers, the government bears the burden and cost of assessing them. The system is often slow to evaluate the foreign education credentials and work experience of new immigrants and to direct them toward employers who need their skills, said Jeffrey Reitz, professor of immigration studies at the University of Toronto.
The problem has been acute in regulated professions like medicine, where a professional organization, the Medical Council of Canada, reviews foreign credentials of new immigrants. The group has had difficulty assessing how a degree earned in China or India stacks up against a similar degree from a university in Canada or the United States. Frustrated by delays, some doctors and other highly trained immigrants take jobs outside their fields just to make ends meet.
The sheer size of the Canadian point system, the complexity of its rules and its backlogs make it slow to adjust to shifts in the labor market, like the oil boom in Alberta.
“I am a university professor, and I can barely figure out the points system,” said Don J. DeVoretz, an economics professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who studies immigration systems. “Lawyers have books that are three feet thick explaining the system.”
The rush to develop the oil fields in northern Alberta has attracted oil companies from around the world, unleashing a surge of construction. Contractors say that often the only thing holding them back is a shortage of qualified workers.
Scott Burns, president of Burnco Rock Products in Calgary, a construction materials company with about 1,000 employees, said he had been able to meet his labor needs only by using temporary work permits. Mr. Burns hired 39 Filipinos for jobs in his concrete plants and plans to hire more. He said that many of the temporary workers had critically needed skills, but that they had no hope of immigrating permanently under the federal point system.
“The system is very much broken,” Mr. Burns said.
Mr. Kureishy, the immigrant from India, said he was drawn to Canada late in his career by its open society and what appeared to be strong interest in his professional abilities. But even though he waited eight years to immigrate, the equivalent of a doctoral degree in human resources development that he earned from Xavier Labor Relations Institute in India was not evaluated in Canada until he arrived here. During his first six months, Canadian employers had no formal comparison of his credentials to guide them.
Eventually, Mr. Kureishy, 55, found full-time work in his field, as a program manager assisting foreign professionals at Ryerson University in Toronto. “It was a long process, but I look at myself as fairly resilient,” Mr. Kureishy said.
He criticized Canada as providing little support to immigrants after they arrived.
“If you advertised for professors and one comes over and is driving a taxi,” he said, “that’s a problem.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/washington/27points.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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