Barutciski: The UN’s Refugee Convention finds itself at a crossroads 75 years later – because of how it’s being interpreted

2026/07/29 2 Comments

Sort of inevitable that conventions get reinterpreted over time but always useful to assess that reinterpretation and the impact of these changes. But yes, empathy and understanding required in both directions:

…The 75th anniversary of the Refugee Convention offers a critical opportunity to change this unsustainable trajectory. Today, the greatest threat to refugee dignity is not domestic xenophobia, though societies must remain vigilant against it. It may be a maximalist and activist reading of the historic treaty pushed by open-border advocates that has stifled candid, pragmatic debate. 

Refugee protection can only survive if it retains the democratic support of host populations. Without it, public goodwill will continue to dry up, leaving governments to scramble with short-sighted, improvised burden-shifting schemes. 

Crucially, sovereign states are not permanently bound by expansive judicial decisions, even if it is reasonable for the interpretation of international treaty law to evolve. National parliaments possess the authority to amend domestic legislation to clarify ambiguous legal terms. By codifying precise thresholds for asylum, most legislatures can effectively override a judiciary and restore the structural parameters originally intended by the treaty.

The central predicament is that few political leaders in the West possess the courage to confront the contradiction characterizing modern refugee law. Instead, mainstream politicians maintain a facade of humanitarian concern, failing to recognize that sustainable policy requires empathy in both directions – toward needy foreigners, and toward the citizens asked to absorb them. 

Source: The UN’s Refugee Convention finds itself at a crossroads 75 years later – because of how it’s being interpreted

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Indian students arranged marriages of convenience for spouse work permits to Canada, warned New Delhi migration official

2026/07/29 Leave a comment

The warnings were there:

The number of Indian undergraduate students applying to come to Canada has dropped over the past few years, in part because Ottawa ended a program granting the spouses of international students work permits, an internal government communication shows. 

The communication discloses how marriages of convenience by some Indian students had enabled their spouses to accompany them to this country to work and to help them pay for their studies.

A 2025 e-mail report, obtained under access to information laws, to immigration department officials from Canada’s High Commission in New Delhi discusses a number of integrity issues involving Indian students, including marriages of convenience.

Marriages linked to immigration to Canada were advertised in Indian newspapers and dating apps, according to the report.

But a change in the rules in 2024 by then-immigration minister Marc Miller closed this avenue to Canada for international students’ spouses. …

Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer who obtained the e-mail through an access to information request, said Canada can pick who it wants to come here to study and “that should mean only the people who can afford to study in Canada without working.”

“Study permits should not be a dating trampoline to Canada,” Mr. Kurland added. 

The number of Indian study permit holders dropped to 93,840 in 2025 from 188,125 in 2024 and 277,950 in 2023, according to IRCC figures, reducing a key revenue stream for many colleges and universities. 

Syed Hussan, executive director at Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said he thought the drop in numbers was because “people are choosing not to go to countries where they cannot go with their families.”…

Source: Indian students arranged marriages of convenience for spouse work permits to Canada, warned New Delhi migration official

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Canadians returning from ISIS ‘highly likely’ to pose threat, intelligence report says

2026/07/29 Leave a comment

Reasonable assessment:

A group of Canadians detained overseas for allegedly being part of ISIS will “highly likely” pose a threat when they return home, warns an intelligence document obtained by Global News.

The Integrated Threat Assessment Centre report was written in June, after Iraq said it had taken custody of an unspecified number of ISIS membersfrom Canada.

The suspects are liable to contribute to extremism once they returned to Canada, “either directly through an act of violence or indirectly by radicalizing others,” the intelligence report said.

“A potential return of Canadian extremist travellers currently in Iraqi custody would highly likely pose a violent extremist threat to Canada,” it said.

The danger posed by returning ISIS supporters was underscored on Saturday when a 21-year-old attacked Berlin’s Pride festival with a vehicle and knife….

Source: Canadians returning from ISIS ‘highly likely’ to pose threat, intelligence report says

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Don’t pay tax? Don’t vote, says Shopify CEO

2026/07/29 1 Comment

Yet another tech bro with anti-democratic tendencies:

Canadians who don’t pay income tax and pensioners shouldn’t have the right to vote, according to the CEO and co-founder of e-commerce company Shopify.

In a post on X, Tobias Lutke endorsed a plan that would strip millions of Canadians of the right to vote. A post by a retired banker suggested proportional voting based on the level of income tax paid.

“What about weighted voting proportional to the level of income tax you pay? (no income tax paid – 0 vote, $1-100k – 1 vote, $100-200k 2 votes and so on… cap it at 5 votes for $500k+. For those that constantly complain about the wealthy not paying tax/fair share they’d have nothing to worry about right? Why not reward representation of taxation and build a democracy around those that foot the bill?” wrote Eric Thor.

To which Lutke replied, “Good system,” adding in another post, “Reward productive people with leverage.”…

Source: Don’t pay tax? Don’t vote, says Shopify CEO

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ICYMI: World Cup leads to 175 asylum claims from visitors who arrived in Canada for matches

2026/07/28 Leave a comment

Not surprising. About 0.07 percent of total visitors:

…Visitors to Canada who applied for visas to attend the FIFA World Cup have so far lodged 175 asylum claims, including from Senegal, Ghana and Egypt.

Canada played host to 13 games in Toronto and Vancouver in June and July, issuing 26,000 visas to visitors. Spain won the international tournament on Sunday by defeating the previous reigning champion, Argentina.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada declined to say how many of the refugee claims were made by soccer players or support staff from visiting teams.

The number of claims could still increase, including from foreign nationals who overstay the terms of their visa and later claim refugee status. ….

Source: World Cup leads to 175 asylum claims from visitors who arrived in Canada for matches

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ICYMI – Urback: Canada does not owe international students a path to residency

2026/07/28 2 Comments

Suspect this represents a majority view even if federal and provincial governments, along with education institutions, were complicit:

…None of this is fair in the very colloquial sense of the word. The Canadian government was explicitly marketing student visas as a path to permanent residency by inviting foreigners to “study, work and stay in Canada,” and prospective students responded in droves. In 2023-24, there were 428,077 student visa-holders in Canada, which was up nearly 50 per cent from just before the pandemic. And the reason why that number exploded was not because people from Punjab were suddenly ecstatic about the opportunity to learn hairdressing at the Eikonic Academy in Mississauga, but because everyone knew it was an easy way to start a new life in Canada. You could even work as much as you wanted while you ostensibly studied for a degree to take back home.

The Canadian government cannot and should not do anything now to placate the international students protesting for PGWP access, even though Ottawa played a major role in setting their expectations in the first place. Canadian residency cannot be for sale, even if the Canadian government dangled the prospect just a few years ago. This is an unfortunate outcome for those who risked everything to start a new life in Canada, but the process was always that: a risk. 

Source: Canada does not owe international students a path to residency

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MP Rempel Garner: “Temporary” status is a lie. That must change.

2026/07/27 Leave a comment

Of note. Don’t understand the parent reference but do share the concern over C-3 and the shift from jus soli to jus sanguinis:

…The federal government has also shown no willingness to review Canada’s overly permissive automatic citizenship system, wherein the descendants of two non-permanents receive citizenship if they are born in Canada and can in turn can (in some cases) enable a pathway to residency for the parents, instead passing legislation that further enables endless chain migration of persons with few ties to Canada. They have levelled few consequences for profiteers like the operators of foreign student diploma mills, or unscrupulous immigration consultants who continue to scam victims. And the Liberals continue to issue hundreds of thousands of new temporary work and study permits this year alone.

And when it comes to the millions of people in Canada with no status or with expired or expiring visas, precious few have been removed, and the Liberals have given no sign that they plan to scale up capacity to enforce immigration law.

Unless immediately corrected, this continued abuse of the spirit and letter of immigration law and the resulting unfettered opening of Canada’s borders will almost certainly be judged by future historians as the core reason why Canada’s pluralism failed….

Source: “Temporary” status is a lie. That must change.

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Nicolas | Tiers pays sûr, vraiment?

2026/07/27 Leave a comment

Hard to see the STCA surviving the court challenge:

…Empêcher les demandes d’asile de personnes ayant transité par les États-Unis est décrié comme un problème majeur par les défenseurs des droits de la personne depuis des années. Mais avec Trump et la violence politique de l’ICE, la situation s’est lourdement encore aggravée. Lorsque le statut de protection temporaire pour les Haïtiens prendra effectivement fin, et que les expulsions massives reprendront malgré la gravité de la situation à Port-au-Prince, comment Ottawa pourra-t-il se justifier de toujours considérer les États-Unis comme un « pays sûr » ? Et sinon, ces personnes devraient aller où, au juste ? Quelle avenue, quel avenir leur restera-t-il, encore ?”

Source: Chronique | Tiers pays sûr, vraiment?

… Preventing asylum applications from people who have passed through the United States has been decried as a major problem by human rights defenders for years. But with Trump and the political violence of the ICE, the situation has worsened even more. When the temporary protection status for Haitians actually ends, and mass expulsions resume despite the seriousness of the situation in Port-au-Prince, how can Ottawa justify still considering the United States as a “safe country”? And if not, where exactly should these people go? What avenue, what future will they have, again?”

Filed under Immigration, Refugees, Trump administration Tagged with ,

Walker: Please Don’t Thank Us for the Land

2026/07/27 Leave a comment

On the words and actions:

…This is the history a land acknowledgment is meant to answer for. When the Barack Obama Presidential Center opened last month, its acknowledgment was thorough. The dedication honored the Anishinaabe and the Council of Three Fires. A permanent display on the campus names nine nations beyond them, refuses the past tense and quotes Mr. Obama on broken treaties and promises. The criticism came anyway, most of it from conservatives who would ridicule any acknowledgment at all. The Center cost $850 million to construct; its museum charges $30 to enter. If you mean it, give it back, the conservatives said. They are not asking in good faith, but they are asking for the right thing. It names the gap between the words and anything the institution is willing to surrender. One side points at that gap to dismiss the whole thing. Native people point at it to ask what comes next.

The attack from the right took a new form this month. A recent 162-page White House report on the Smithsonian faulted museum officials for opening events with land acknowledgments and criticized exhibits describing Native people forced from their homelands. Acknowledgments, it said, are objectionable no matter their wording. Its complaint is that institutions dwell too long on the theft.

Mine is different. Institutions stop exactly where the cost to them would begin.

The fight over land acknowledgments is a fight about words. The right wants them struck; museums and institutions want to keep saying them. A quarrel about language is one an institution can survive. A reckoning with what it owes would be different.

When my aunt and I spoke about what the land actually means to our people, she said: “The earth is our relative. Everything that has passed returns to the earth. We would say ashes to ashes, but ours was blood and body to our soil.”…

I’m not ready to throw the practice of land acknowledgments out. The form is too small for what it carries; there’s no way to spell out four centuries of dispossession in two sentences. An acknowledgment that opens a conversation, that involves the tribe, that leads somewhere, is different. But the test isn’t in the words. It’s in what action comes after the words have been spoken.

Reid Walker is a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation.

Source: Please Don’t Thank Us for the Land

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U.S. deportation roundups are surging while staying out of the public eye

2026/07/24 Leave a comment

Of note:

…The experience here is indicative of what is happening across the country. Mass roundups are escalating even as the White House has mostly stopped publicizing ICE raids since federal agents gunned down two U.S. citizens during immigration operations in Minneapolis in January.

ICE arrested 39,563 people in June, its highest-ever monthly total, according to figures released this week by the agency. That same month, Republican lawmakers authorized a further US$70-billion for the deportation campaign. In July so far, ICE is approaching an average of 1,500 arrests a day.

And after being largely out of the public eye since January, the dragnet is attracting renewed attention after ICE shot and killed two immigrants – Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Joan Sebastián Guerrero in Maine – during traffic stops this month….

Source: U.S. deportation roundups are surging while staying out of the public eye

Filed under Immigration, Trump administration Tagged with ,

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