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  1. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-india-canada-international-student-recruitment/ In India and Canada’s international student recruiting machine, opportunity turns into grief and exploitation From rural Punjab to suburban Brampton, Ont., a booming industry brings in thousands of Indians each year – but while recruiters and schools profit, many students flounder due to lack of supports DAKSHANA BASCARAMURTY, NEHA BHATT AND UDAY RANA A giddy Manjinder Singh strides into the offices of Grey Matters, an education consultancy in Chandigarh in the Indian state of Punjab, with his mother at his side, several boxes of sweet milk cake in tow. Mr. Singh’s student visa to Canada has just arrived, and he’s here to show his gratitude. The 18-year-old presents a gift-wrapped sweet box to the consultancy’s founder, Sonia Dhawan, who urges him to offer it first to the idol of the elephant-faced Hindu god Ganesha, mounted next to the Canadian and American flags. The reigning motif here is the maple leaf – it’s pinned to the walls of the counselling cubicles, on colourful flyers in every corner and even on a little golden brooch on Ms. Dhawan’s blazer. After a little pooja ceremony celebrating the arrival of his visa, which will allow him to study at a private university in downtown Vancouver, Mr. Singh distributes sweets to everyone in the room, grinning from ear to ear. Grey Matters, which sees 7,000 to 8,000 students each month at its 56 locations in India, is one of many such centres in Chandigarh’s sprawling Sector-17 market, a hub of retail stores and education institutes that has become known as a one-stop shop for young Indians itching to begin their adult lives abroad. Businesses like this all over the country send tens of thousands of Indian students like Manjinder to Canada each year – 105,192 were enrolled in Canadian universities and colleges in the 2018-2019 school year, the most recent period for which data are available. They promise a new life, jobs, houses and prosperity and – ever since the federal government introduced a series of programs in 2009 that opened the gates more widely to Indian students – a chance at the ultimate prize: Canadian citizenship. But for many, the dream doesn’t mesh with the reality. A few hours’ drive west, in Punjab’s Moga district Ont., that’s so well known in India it’s referenced in Punjabi hip hop – pulled back on its aggressive growth strategy for international students in 2018 after the city officials and community advocates raised the alarm about the lack of social infrastructure to support these students. A local funeral home has called what it’s seen lately a crisis: It handles four to five international student deaths each month – almost all of them suspected suicides or overdoses. In a major study on international students conducted at a postsecondary institution in Western Canada, a faculty member said landlords provide international students with “basically a hole in the ground that students may be willing to take for any cost.”4 When Ms. Dhawan launched Grey Matters 25 years ago, Australia was where Indian students wanted to study. But over time the preference shifted to the U.S., then the U.K. Now “Canada is all the rage,” she says. She credits this largely to the Student Partners Program, which Stephen Harper’s Conservative government launched in 2009 to streamline the application process for Indian students, specifically, who wished to study at a few dozen participating Canadian colleges. In just a year, the government was already celebrating its success: The approval rate for applications from Indian students had doubled. And while the program later expanded to include Chinese international students as well, the overwhelming majority of Chinese students here are enrolled at Canadian universities (83 per cent). The vast majority of Indian students, meanwhile, are registered at colleges (73 per cent). Students and recruitment businesses interviewed by The Globe say this is because most Indian students want to come to Canada to live rather than learn, and registering in a college program offers a cheaper and faster path to settling here (after landing in Canada on a student visa, they can get a postgraduate work permit and start logging the employment hours necessary to apply for permanent residency and, down the road, Canadian citizenship). As the destinations have shifted for Indian students looking to study abroad, so too have the cities they’re departing from. Firmly rooted in the agricultural belt of North India, Patiala, a city in the southeast of Punjab, is surrounded by billowing fields of wheat, maize, paddy and sugarcane. It is also a growing industrial hub. But a drive through the city suggests the aspirations of its residents lie elsewhere. “Study in Canada” billboards sit atop buildings, “Settle Abroad” posters are plastered on long stretches of electrical poles and local papers are filled with ads for prep courses for IELTS, the English proficiency test students must score well in to gain acceptance into Canadian colleges and universities. It used to be that students came from the bigger cities in India, often with a degree under their belts and some measure of worldliness. Now, they are coming in increasing numbers from smaller municipalities and farming villages too, often departing right after finishing high school, say consultants in India and advocacy groups in Canada interviewed by The Globe. Seeing limited opportunities for their children in their own country, rural families in India – particularly Punjab – are pushing them to seek a better life overseas; in 2018, 150,000 students left the state to study abroad, according to government figures. Some students who come into Grey Matters are so inexperienced the company offers instructions on how to board a plane or use the washroom on a flight. From Patiala, the wide road narrows to a single, tarred lane flanked by paddy fields that leads into the village of Mandour, where Narinder Singh grew up. His family sent him to Canada in 2017, where he registered in a hotel management program at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ont. Like many international students enrolled at colleges across Ontario, he did distance education and lived in Brampton. The city is home to the largest Punjabi diaspora in Canada and offers a soft place to land: There’s easy access to gurdwaras, restaurants that serve familiar food and grocers that stock Maggi, India’s beloved instant noodles. And at this point, if a young person wants to make the journey from Punjab to Canada, chances are high they have a cousin or acquaintance from their hometown there already who can help navigate life in a new country. There are also plenty of postsecondary institutes in Brampton itself. Sheridan, Algoma University and Canadore College – all publicly funded – have campuses in Brampton. The city is also home to more than 60 private colleges, many tucked into strip malls and plazas. At Broadway Consultants, a study-abroad consultancy in Patiala, 80 per cent of students choose to go to Brampton because there are so many private colleges in the city, which are seen as more affordable and easier to gain admission to with a lower language proficiency score. “It’s not the degree they are after, but a route to a better life and money,” says Broadway’s executive director, Baljinder Singh. The day Narinder left his village for Canada, he wore a shiny black tuxedo and slicked his hair back. He was one of the first to make the journey, and in the subsequent years, many of his cousins and neighbours followed. In the house next door, Narinder’s cousin Charanveer is eager to join his cousins in Brampton. He’d been working at a factory in Patiala earning just $136 each month with no benefits. He quit and now spends four hours a day in English preparation classes while also pursuing an undergraduate degree at a local college, with the hope that it might help his admission chances. But he’s not as starry-eyed as many students are about life in Canada because Narinder has been straight with him about the challenges. “It’s not that life is easier in Canada – Narinder says he is struggling too,” he says. “Settling down is difficult in another country, plus you have to think about saving up and working on future plans. But what makes a difference is that he is earning good money, which he couldn’t have done here.” Charanveer Singh of Mandour village, left, quit a factory job to focus on his studies, and hopes to join his extended family in Brampton. Leaving is a risky option but 'there is nothing for him here,' says his mother, Jaspreet Kaur, right. At their home next door to Charanveer, Satnam Singh and Daljit Kaur show some family photos. Their son Narinder, Charanveer's cousin, left for Canada in 2017. Patiala, a city east of Mandour, is home to many companies preparing Indians for immigration. Mantajvir Singh’s expectations of life in Canada were coloured by the WhatsApp profile pictures of fellow villagers who had left to study abroad. Some had Niagara Falls as the backdrop, others posed in front of newly purchased cars or large houses. Once he left his village of Chak Sarai in Punjab, he imagined he would move into a palatial home and spend weekends exploring his new country’s natural beauty. When he first arrived to begin a program at Centennial College in Toronto, a school where about 40 per cent of the international student population is from India, he briefly lived with a family member in Brampton before he found a rental. All he could afford was $350 a month for a shared room in a rundown apartment that housed seven others. He found the experience dehumanizing: Insects infested the living space and the water would get cut off without notice. Complaints to the landlord about the state of disrepair were rarely addressed. Rentals like this, the listings for which explicitly target students, dominate the local online classifieds in the Canadian cities where Indians on study permits have settled. In Brampton, which has a massive shortage of purpose-built rentals, the surge in the student population has created a lucrative but dangerous underground economy. In 2019, Brampton logged almost 1,600 complaints about illegal secondary units, many of them in basements. The city’s fire inspectors have been called to overcrowded rooming houses where mattresses have been found on every possible surface, including the kitchen floor. It’s a perennial issue discussed at Brampton city council with no easy solution. To live on campus was unthinkable for many of the Indian international students the Globe and Mail spoke to – a luxury only domestic students could afford. In Brampton, Sheridan has limited on-campus housing that can cost more than twice as much as students pay for space in a rooming house. On its website, the college links to a portal that lists vetted rentals – the hope is that students will choose these safer options over the cheaper but more crowded and unsafe accommodation advertised in online classifieds or community bulletin boards. But with only a few dozens options listed in the database, it doesn’t come close to addressing the issue, which is why Sheridan, whose international student population swelled by 34 per cent from 2015 to 2017, pumped the brakes on growth in 2018, capping the number of international students they admit. “We have focused that decrease on our campus in Brampton precisely because the communities we serve and the partners we value raise concerns about social infrastructure,” says Janet Morrison, Sheridan College’s president. For Mantajvir Singh, paying fees at Centennial College and keeping up the appearance of success in Brampton carried a heavy cost to his mental health. Every semester, Mantajvir would scramble to pay his college fees by borrowing money everywhere he could: $3,000 from the loan his parents took out after putting up their farmland as collateral, $2,000 from a relative in Vancouver, $1,000 that he’d take out on a credit card. If there was more owed, sometimes he’d ask his parents for more. He felt he needed to maintain the illusion he was thriving, just like all those students whose WhatsApp avatars he’d seen before leaving India. He didn’t spend a dollar on anything new for himself for the first two years he was in Canada, but then, just before his first trip home, he bought a Reebok track suit and a new pair of Adidas sneakers. He knew he had to play the part. When he was in Canada, the loneliness was crushing. Sometimes all it took was seeing a parent cuddling their child on the bus or a family walking together in a mall, and Mr. Singh would feel depressed – the memories of being that close to family seemed so far away. “Sometimes I felt like I was physically living but psychologically dead,” he says. He went twice to see a counsellor whose services were available through Centennial College, but the counsellor was white and only spoke English. The college has a student support program through a private insurance company that provides students with mental health counselling in more than 100 languages, but it’s not available in person. “When you’re lonely, you don’t want to speak from the brain, you want to speak from the heart, right?” Mantajvir says. “If I’m talking in Punjabi to you, I’m going to be talking more from my heart.” Harjot Sarwara stands with his wife, Manpreet Kaur, and daughter, Mehreen Kaur, outside his friend's house in Brampton. When Harjot Sarwara walked into the Chandigarh offices of ESS Global, a recruiter looked at his résumé and pointed out that since he’d completed his education in India six years earlier, gaining admission could prove trickier – he wouldn’t qualify for the Student Partners Program that so many students entered on and he would have to pay more money upfront. The recruiter told him if he wanted to go to Canada, he could get him admission into a sales program at a college in B.C. It didn’t matter that Mr. Sarwara’s background was in mechanical engineering and that he’d worked as an AutoCAD drafter. ESS Global charged him $500 to get the offer of admission from the school and then told him he needed to pay another $25,000 for his first year there, as well as three months of living expenses. He researched and calculated that those costs should total about $17,000 and asked what the other charges were for. “This is the package – do you want to take it or leave it?” the recruiter asked him. Mr. Sarwara declined. Later, he spent $1,700 to have a lawyer help him gain admission to another school, but the application was rejected when he didn’t provide the correct paperwork. The extent of the recruitment machine was driven home even further when another agent – whom Mr. Sarwara understood to be a subcontractor working for a recruiter employed by CDI College, a private career college – took $1,700 from him to get him admitted to the career college’s campus in Montreal In an industry the size of India’s, with so many players, addressing exploitation in the recruitment process is difficult. There are roughly 5,000 to 6,000 IELTS centres in Punjab alone offering coaching for students who will take the standardized English test, according to The Tribune, an English newspaper based in Chandigarh. In 2018, Niagara College retested hundreds of international students who were suspected of providing fraudulent IELTS scores on their language admission tests, since so many were struggling in class due to poor English skills. In an e-mail, Julie Lafortune, a spokesperson for Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees Canada, said in 2019 it paid for an ad campaign in India designed to educate prospective students about fraudsters working as immigration agents or recruiters and discourage those who had been rejected from continuing to apply. Mr. Sarwara finally got admission to CDI College to study web design, and his family took a loan of $20,000 to pay for it. After two and a half years, he found himself routinely asking his parents to wire him more cash to keep up with his expenses. He learned quickly that the way a career college operates is quite different from the publicly funded postsecondary institutions. Many programs had classes on weekends only, which freed up students to work during the week. In his first few days in class, he was stunned to see that nearly every other student was also Indian. Most were teenagers and seemed woefully unprepared for the basics of the course. “You know what they used to say to me? ‘Brother, save my file. I don’t know how to save a file,’” he said. Last December, the Quebec government temporarily barred 10 private colleges from issuing a certificate required by international students to get a student visa to Canada while it investigated their admissions practices and operations. This caused chaos for thousands of students in India, whose applications and acceptances were in limbo for several months, even after the suspension was lifted. Gurpreet Malhotra, the executive director of Indus Community Services, says he’s come to see private colleges in Canada as being in the business of immigration, not education. “The colleges are getting easy money, and the students are getting an easy way to get to Canada.” In 2020, Khalsa Aid Canada, the domestic chapter of an international NGO, alongside One Voice Canada, an advocacy group for international students, conducted a survey of 303 international students (98 per cent of whom were from India). They found 30 per cent suffered from clinical or major depressive disorder, and 60 per cent “suffered from poor well-being.” The grim results of this have become starkly clear in the past four years to Kamal Bhardwaj, director of Lotus Funeral Home and Cremation Centre in west Toronto, a facility preferred by many South Asians for its culturally specific services. He said he handles four to five international student deaths a month, many of which he suspects are suicides or overdoses (deaths from unnatural causes go through the coroner’s office, he explained, and he’s not privy to those results). One of the recent cases he handled was that of Prabhjot Singh, an international student from Punjab who was living in Truro, N.S., when he was stabbed to death outside a friend’s home. The incident sent a chill through the Indian international student community across Canada, which raised nearly $100,000 to send Prabhjot’s body back to his family in India through Mr. Bhardwaj’s company. About a year before he stepped into the path of an oncoming train, Lovepreet Singh told his family he’d finished his education and found work, but the details of his life in Canada were always unclear. “He was clearly struggling financially … and kept asking us to send him money. I sent what I could. But if he had only talked to us, we would have figured a way out of this,” his father says. Lovepreet’s education put his family $50,000 in debt, most of which has now been paid off through community fundraising following his death. “I keep wondering how alone my bachcha [child] would have been. I keep thinking of all the things he must have suffered alone. I wish he had people with him to tell him he was going to be all right,” his father says. The news of Lovepreet Singh’s death received little mainstream media coverage, but it spread like wildfire in Brampton’s student community. One Voice Canada counted 10 publicly reported international student suicides in the past year, four of which were in Peel Region. A group of Punjabi community organizers hosted a kirtan – a Sikh prayer meet – both as a memorial for Lovepreet and as a forum for students to open up about their struggles, most of which seemed rooted in financial stress and instability. Nearly every current or former international student The Globe and Mail spoke to complained about the 20-hour-per-week limit on work hours imposed on student visa holders. But the federal government has this limit in place for a reason: Students are expected to actually be pursuing studies while here on a study permit. Some adhere to the restriction and fall deeper into debt trying to cover their tuition and living expenses; others keep their heads above water by taking on extra shifts illegally. The work is easy enough to find through temporary agencies, Mr. Sarwara explains, but the downside is they often take advantage of students and underpay them. During a tough three-month period in Montreal, an agency paid him only $9.50 an hour instead of $13.50, Quebec’s minimum wage. Pandemic-related job losses carried a sharper sting for international students, since they didn’t qualify for the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit that helped so many others who were laid off stay afloat. Sheridan College distributed more than $1-million in bursaries to students in the first year of the pandemic to help fill some of those gaps. Local non-profit Punjabi Community Health Services frequently fielded desperate calls from students fearing eviction and directed a large portion of their 2020 budget to providing them with grocery gift cards or cash so they could eat and pay rent. Some students who reached out had been kicked out of their homes, forced to sleep in their cars or on friends’ couches, says Manvir Bhangu, the manager of health programs with the non-profit. Usually, many of these Sikh students would be able to seek support at the local gurdwara, but pandemic restrictions made that impossible. Ms. Bhangu’s agency received reports that at one house in the L6P area, a woman who was running a short-term rental for newly arrived international students to quarantine in was threatening to withhold their passports (which she’d required them to turn over when they checked in) if they didn’t pay her. Once, in the middle of the night, Ms. Bhangu had to electronically transfer money to a landlord to keep them from kicking a student out on the street. She says her agency didn’t just want to distribute handouts, but to empower students by offering résumé-writing workshops and job interview training. The reception of this kind of assistance has been less enthusiastic, she says. “I’m finding that a lot of them are not willing to change their situations,” she says. “A part of me doesn’t want to believe it, but maybe they’re just like, ‘Okay, I can get free money. So why am I going to work?’ I’m sure a lot of them are traumatized by the work environments they’ve been in, so they’re like, ‘I don’t want to do this. I’m just waiting for this to be over and I can go back home.’” Community concerns can be constructive, but more often they are hostile. At a plaza across the street from Sheridan College’s Brampton campus, a popular hangout for international students, signs forbid loitering. In 2017, a brawl between two groups of international students fuelled animosity toward the population, who were labelled as violent troublemakers by local news outlets and on social media. Other residents have complained the students don’t assimilate well – that they wear chappals (casual slippers) out in public, that they only spend time with other international students, that they don’t speak enough English. Arshdeep Singh, who came to Brampton from Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab in 2017 to study at Centennial College, has picked up on the immigration status hierarchy that operates in his city. “If you are a citizen, you are at the top,” says Mr. Singh, now a long-haul truck driver. “If you are a permanent resident, you are treated better than others. If you are here on a work permit, they know you are desperate. You won’t be treated as an equal. If you are a student, you are at the very bottom of the food chain.” Mr. Singh and others who spoke to The Globe say some students don’t feel comfortable turning to the older, more established Punjabi immigrants in the community for support when they’re struggling. Students are often mocked for living in basements, but then treated with suspicion if they start to live more comfortably. If they get a car, a necessity for many jobs in a city as sprawling as Brampton, they’re chastised for living beyond their means, Mr. Singh says. The support network for international students is largely made up of other international students navigating the same challenges. 'I’m not going to lie, I picked Canada because all these Punjabi singers kept singing about Canada as this great place,' Navneet Kaur says. Navneet Kaur, 26, has become a surrogate mother to her five roommates in Brampton, all of whom are current or former students living away from home for the first time. She can’t get through a conversation without shouting instructions to her younger housemates. “Turn off the stove!” she yells to one in Punjabi. “Don’t run down the stairs, you’ll hurt yourself!” she says to another. Ms. Kaur was already a fully qualified engineer before she enrolled at Canadore College in North Bay, Ont., and says every one of the 180 students in her graduating class at Amritsar College of Engineering now live in Canada. Her parents wanted her to stay in Amritsar and get married, but she wanted something more and chose a life in Canada, inspired largely by depictions of the country that had permeated local pop culture. “I’m not going to lie, I picked Canada because all these Punjabi singers kept singing about Canada as this great place,” she says. “Punjabi music today is more about Canada than it is about Punjab.” Life here has turned out to be different from what those songs promised. Ms. Kaur works at a Lululemon warehouse in Brampton. She likes the work she does, but more than half her monthly income is sent back to her parents. “Sometimes, it feels like I’m part of a machine,” she says. Sheridan College’s Janet Morrison wants students like Ms. Kaur to come here with clear eyes about life in Canada, not just the fantasies promoted in pop culture. On the ground in India, the college has been operating a pre-departure program to teach students what is expected of them, what life is really like and where they can go for support. There are mock lectures to attend, sessions on the cost of living and advice about their housing options. Sometimes, if a prospective student doesn’t seem like they’ll be a good fit at Sheridan or has aspirations that don’t align with the programs on offer, Sheridan staff will refer them to other institutions in Canada. But Ms. Morrison knows that work on the India side isn’t enough. This winter, Sheridan is convening a summit with municipal leaders in Peel Region, including public health, police and fire services, to look at how to tackle issues related to international students, with housing as one of the top priorities. Mr. Malhotra, of Indus Community Services, says if the federal government is bringing so many students here as part of a larger economic and immigration strategy, they have a responsibility to better support them. “The reason Canada set this up is so that we can grab an immigrant young. They’re going to have children, set up a house, all that kind of stuff and become part of the Canadian society,” he says. “If that’s the goal, you want them to have as positive an experience settling as possible.” Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included quotes from a Brampton Councillor who has been sanctioned by city council. It has been updated to remove the references.
  2. This obsession has taken over other areas of Panjab too after "plane-Gurdvara's" in Doaba region! Punjab: In Barnala, gurdwara gets 'planes' in offerings as 'foreign dreams come true' & belief takes flight (Neel Kamal / TNN / Updated: Jul 25, 2022, 11:56 IST) HANDIAYA (BARNALA): After Doaba, people in Malwa region of Punjab have started thronging religious places even to fulfil their dreams to fly abroad. The historic Gurdwara Patshahi Nauvi at Handiaya village in Barnala district has gained in popularity among worshippers praying to settle abroad. Many devotees reach the gurdwara from far-off places and offer replicas of airplanes at the sanctum santorum. Going by the trend, a number of stalls selling toy planes have come up outside the gurdwara. The gurdwara, where ninth Sikh master Guru Tegh Bahadur is believed to have visited, was built in 1997. It is only now that it has become a point for those making wishes to flying abroad. A huge crowd throngs the gurdwara on Sundays. The trend of youngsters leaving Punjab for foreign shores, mainly Canada, Australia and USA, for a better life has been popular for years now. It is because of this that coaching centres for speaking in English have mushroomed across the state and English proficiency tests like IELTS and TOEFL have gotten popular. With a large number of devotees thronging every Sunday and even on weekdays, the gurdwara has gotten new buildings to accommodate the crowd. Himmat Singh of Dhurkot village, who brought a plane as an offering to the gurdwara, said, "I have applied for Canada and my file is at the initial stages. I have come to wish the file is cleared at the earliest." Sandeep Singh of Kahneke village, who brought a plane as an offering too, said his wife has applied for a work visa to Canada and he had come to the gurdwara to wish she got through. A sewadar at the gurdwara said it was beleved that wishes of many people had been fulfilled at the gurdwara. "That is why the number of devotees to the gurdwara keep increasing," he said. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/punjab-in-barnala-gurdwara-gets-planes-in-offerings-as-foreign-dreams-come-true-belief-takes-flight/articleshowprint/93099089.cms
  3. When the UK eventually brexists and leaves the European Union in 2019 the closet UK like and english speaking nation would be Ireland which would be remanining in the EU. Many British Sikhs who want to be part of the EU may want to relocate and migrate to the republic of Ireland. So does anyone what is the viability of doing so? Are there many Sikhs in ireland? Are there Gurdwara's there? What are the employment prospects for ethnic/religious minorities?
  4. So as you guys probably know I live in a congested, tier-A1 metro city of India where some of the richest and poorest people co-exist . I am from a middle-class though and only live in a 1-BHK apartment with my family . But last evening with a casual chat with a school friend , came to knew he has migrated to toronto , ontario lol. He has the same education as me, and same age as me . I was left wondering what I was doing and why I wasn't trying hard to migrate to canada. I don't know whether I should continue with a relatively comfortable life here in india or immigrate. Hence I am asking you folks a honest opinion. Should I try ??
  5. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3627218/French-man-arrested-125kg-explosives-Ukraine-planned-carry-attacks-Euro-2016-angry-mass-immigration-spread-Islam.html
  6. Buta Singh hadnt eaten in days, and his body felt like it was vibrating with hunger as he sat up on his bunk bed and watched the prison guards storm in. The guards rounded up two dozen or so young men, all of them, like Singh, immigrants from the Indian state of Punjab. There was someone there to see them. Unbeknownst to Singh, the visitor was a representative from the Indian government. As he shuffled after the guards in his baggy navy-blue uniform the uniform hed been wearing for 10 months, issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Singh wondered whether the visitor was some higher-up from ICE, there to make a deal. Like Singh, the Punjabis were followers of Sikhism, a religion that emerged some 500 years ago in the region now bisected by the border between India and Pakistan. Sikhs are usually recognizable by their beards and long, turbaned hair. But the ones in this group had shorn their heads and faces to better go unnoticed on their journeys: by air from India to the New World, by land through Central America, and finally to the line dividing Mexico from the United States. Most were asylum-seekers and had passed interviews that determined they could stay in the country as their claims moved forward, and many had close family members living legally in the U.S. yet the government refused to release them. So, on April 8, 2014, the Punjabis at Texass El Paso Processing Center went on a hunger strike. It was about a week later when Singh, feeling shaky on his feet, walked into the meeting room where the visitor was waiting. He was startled to see a short, rotund man in a turban with his beard tied underneath his chin: a fellow Sikh from the Indian consulate in Houston. He was there to offer to send the detainees home. Should they decide otherwise, the diplomat said, they were wrong to think their hunger strike would sway the American authorities. Singhs surprise turned to anger. In India, he had been active in a fringe political party that advocates the creation of Khalistan, an autonomous Sikh state. The police in Punjab have a history of persecuting separatists, and Singh sought refuge elsewhere, he says, after they tortured him one too many times. Now he was in America seeking asylum from the Indian state, and here, facilitated by the U.S. government, was an emissary of that very state. (The Indian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.) None of you are doctors, the diplomat said. None of you are engineers. Why would America want you? http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidnoriega/americas-quiet-crackdown-on-indian-immigrants
  7. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3277229/German-mayoral-candidate-stabbed-neck-targeted-support-refugees.html German mayoral candidate stabbed in the neck after being targeted 'because of her support for refugees' Mayoral candidate for German city Cologne, Henriette Reker, was stabbed Police said a 44-year-old man sprang on her as she campaigned in the city An aide was seriously injured, while three others received minor injuries Ms Reker has been instrumental in organising accommodation for refugees By Imogen Calderwood For Mailonline Published: 17:36, 17 October 2015 | Updated: 00:52, 18 October 2015 1.3k shares 65 View comments +12 Henriette Reker, who is running for mayor of the city of Cologne as an independent, and one of her aides were left severely injured after being stabbed A German mayoral candidate has been stabbed in the neck in an attack with 'anti-foreigner motives'. Henriette Reker, who is running for mayor of the city of Cologne as an independent, and one of her female aides were left severely injured in the savage assault. Police believe that she was targeted because of her extensive work in housing Germany's refugees. Germany’s interior minister said the attack underlined growing concerns over hatred and violence during the refugee crisis. German leader Angela Merkel expressed her 'shock' following news of the attack. Ms Reker, 58, currently heads Cologne’s social affairs and integration department and is responsible for refugee housing. A 44-year-old man sprang on the pair while they were campaigning in the western city, the fourth largest in Germany, police said. The German national and resident of Cologne said he had been unemployed for several years. He told officials that he targeted Ms Reker and that ‘he wanted to and did commit this act because of anti-foreigner motives’, according to Norbert Wagner, head of the police criminal investigation unit in Cologne. Three other people were also injured, although not seriously. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere described the stabbing as ‘an attack on our democracy’ and said he had long been ‘concerned by the hate-filled language and violent actions that accompany the refugee debate in Germany’. ‘This cowardly attack in Cologne is further evidence of the increasing radicalisation of the refugee debate,’ he continued. +12 A 44-year-old man sprang on the pair while they were campaigning in the western German city, police said +12 Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers said Ms Reker has been involved in the supporting and helping to house refugees in the city +12 Chancellor Angela Merkal, Germany's leader, has expressed 'shock' at the news of the attack. Ms Merkel’s policy has led to growing tensions in Germany, triggering a backlash from her conservative allies and spawning a growing number of increasingly vocal far-right protests
  8. Withdrawal Monday of services at 15 of Canada’s largest visa processing centres abroad. It started from April, was a rotating strike, starting today strike fully in effect. http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2013/07/26/government-and-diplomats-discussions-on-binding-arbitration-fall-apart/
  9. The method is known as the "Surinder Singh route", named after an historic court case. It involves leaving the UK and working in the EEA for about three months. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23029195
  10. Source: http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/02/02/welcome-to-my-world/ The article sheds some light on the dealings of Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism, with the Sikh community. It also gives insight into what Minister Jason Kenney really thinks about the 1984 Sikh Genocide and the Sikh movement for Khalistan. Some parts of the article innacurately describe the details of the Vaisakhi "celebration". There were no people dancing, the "traditional Indian beat" is likely referring to the dhol used for gatka, and there was definitely no chicken present. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ Last year, L’actualité, the sister publication to Maclean’s in Quebec, got unprecedented access to Canada’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. Chief political reporter Alec Castonguay was given a rare behind-the-scenes look at the man who is arguably most responsible for delivering the Conservatives a majority in the last federal election and who is remaking the nation’s immigration policy. This is an edited, translated version of the story that appeared in the magazine and as a L’actualité ebook. Jason Kenney scans the dense crowd of roughly 20,000 Sikh Canadians in traditional dress and multicoloured turbans here to mark Vaisakhi—the annual celebration commemorating the foundation of this community originally from India’s northeast. Sitting cross-legged on the thin grey carpeting covering the enormous stage, the minister is inwardly cringing. He doesn’t like what he sees. In front of him, a dozen yellow and blue Khalistan flags are splitting the crowd near the podium, held by men fighting the hot early May sun in T-shirts. The man at the mic, speaking Punjabi, suddenly speeds up and radicalizes his tone. He speaks of genocide, of violent clashes and of the independence of Khalistan—a country that a faction of Sikh nationalists would like to carve from India. It’s too much. Kenney, who’s picked up some Punjabi since becoming minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism in 2008, stands mid-sentence, crosses the room and exits as three baffled Conservative MPs look on, unsure whether or not they should follow. At the bottom of the steps, Kenney puts his shoes back on and raises his hand as if to rip off the orange bandana that all visitors wear inside Rexdale’s Sikh Spiritual Centre. He takes a deep breath, and restrains himself. A Sikh organizer approaches, looking contrite. “You are trying to exploit my presence here,” Kenney shouts, his stare fixed on the man in a white turban. “This is not a civilized way to behave. I warned you, and you did it anyway. I am aware that you would like to entertain the Prime Minister next year. You can forget it. He won’t be coming.” The minister makes his way to the exit, the Sikh organizer fast on his heels, apologizing profusely. It had all started so well 25 minutes earlier. The party was in full swing. People sang and danced in all corners to a traditional Indian beat. Hundreds of children played in inflatable games erected along the four-lane street. Smells of spices and roast chicken tickled the nostrils. Kenney took the stage with compliments reserved for a guest of honour. At the microphone he shouted a well-timed greeting: “Bole sonai hai? Sat siri akal!” Thousands of people responded: “Sat siri akal!” (The Sikh greeting roughly translates to: “Who stands up for truth?,” to which the crowd responds, “We stand up for truth, God is the ultimate truth!”) The minister had bragged of the government’s achievements, including the creation, at the heart of the ministry of Foreign Affairs, of an office of religious freedoms to promote and defend all faiths. He highlighted that Vaisakhi is now a Canadian tradition because it is celebrated every year on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. It was after his speech, once he was seated, that the Khalistan flags suddenly appeared. At the entrance, several long minutes pass before the minister’s driver pulls up in his black Nissan SUV. As we sit down, Kenney turns to me. “I am so sorry,” he says in French. He finally pulls off his bandana and explains that Sikh nationalists are now waging their war in Canada. They hope to convince the roughly 450,000 Canadians of Sikh origin, the majority of whom live in the suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver, to put pressure on their families still in India, but also on the Canadian government, to support their demands. They want Ottawa to recognize a genocide in which Sikhs were victims, in 1984 in India. “It was an extremist speech,” he says. “I had to leave the room, otherwise the community would think I endorse such a campaign. Certain groups have sometimes tried to wield my prominence to advance their cause. I have to be vigilant at all times. They shouldn’t be encouraged to reproduce, in Canada, the tensions of their homelands.” It’s a message he reiterates to new immigrants from China and Tibet, Greece and Turkey, Israel and Iran. He glances out the window and sighs. “Welcome to my world.” He could just as easily have said “my worlds,” given how dramatically Canada’s new immigrant and multicultural canvas is growing and diversifying—it now includes almost 200 languages. More than 250,000 new immigrants arrive in Canada every year; in 2010, that number hit 280,000, the equivalent of 0.8 per cent of the population—the highest proportion of any industrialized country, followed by Great Britain and Germany (at 0.7 per cent each). Inevitably, this has brought profound political change. Kenney is at the forefront of these changes. His objective: understanding, seducing and attracting ethnic communities to the Conservative party, an electorate once taken for granted by the Liberal Party of Canada. He has shaken thousands of hands, put away hundreds of very spicy meals and pulled off his shoes an incalculable number of times in entering mosques, temples or integration centres to give speeches. His methods are old school, far removed from social networks, where human contact, proximity and the fight for values undertaken by the Conservative party have gradually won over a large number of new Canadians. In the halls of government, it is plainly acknowledged: Kenney is the architect of the Conservative majority, having worked discreetly, yet tirelessly, for the past five years to build bridges with Canada’s ethnic communities. It’s a success that Britain’s Conservative Party would like to replicate, and that the U.S. Republican party, after its electoral drubbing in November, is cautiously eyeing. It’s meticulous work, long and complex. With the patience of a Buddhist monk, the minister has had to figure out the subtleties of every community and learn its traditions in order to navigate competing demands and interests. It was no accident that after Justin Trudeau formally declared his intention to run for Liberal leader last October, his first destinations were Richmond, B.C., and Mississauga, Ont., two cities with heavy immigrant populations. Both had been Liberal ridings conquered by the Conservatives. In their way, Kenney, 44, and Trudeau, 40, represent the future of their parties. And as they fight on this same battlefield, Kenney is putting everything on the line . He could become the next leader of the Canadian conservative movement. Kenney’s longevity and the scope of his reforms have surprised experts. “Immigration generally gets inherited by a junior minister with no real presence, anxious to trade up for a better cabinet post,” says Stephan Reichhold, director of an immigrant support network in Quebec. “Kenney is practically a deputy prime minister. He has been there for four years and has undertaken an unending number of reforms. Some are good, others are very ideological.” Not bad for a guy who was barely interested in the politics of immigration before 2006 and wanted nothing to do with that role in cabinet. The young Alberta MP had even refused the role of immigration critic when the Tories were in opposition. “I saw the enormous pressure and the very delicate handling of complex politics the job required. Even when we took power, I wanted to run screaming when the Prime Minister talked to me about it,” Kenney recalls. Stephen Harper convinced him with an argument that resonated: the very future of the conservative movement in Canada depended on it. Just before forming his first cabinet in early 2006, Harper met with Kenney in a hotel suite in Ottawa. “Do you remember the conversation we had in October 1994?” he asked. Kenney remembered it perfectly. On that chilly fall day, the Reform party congress had just wrapped up in the capital and Harper, a newly elected MP of just 35, was sipping a beer at the Royal Oak Pub on Bank Street when Kenney went over to him. The two men knew each other because Kenney, despite his 26 years, was already heading the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Kenney laid out his theory: the division of the conservative movement between the Reform party and the Progressive Conservative party wasn’t the right’s only problem. “Even with a united right,” he said, “conservatism has peaked. Votes are becoming stagnant.” Conservatives, he added, would have to cross the “final frontier”: that of immigrants. “Look at demographic trends—it’s the future. Immigrants have the same values as us, we have to talk to them, to convince them.” Harper, skeptical, responded that this very liberal segment of the population would never vote Conservative. Better, in his opinion, to focus on native-born Canadians. When, 12 years later, Harper took power at the helm of a minority government, he proposed that Kenney pursue the mission that he had defined, without quite realizing it, beer in hand, in an Ottawa bar. “Prove to me that I was wrong,” the Prime Minister challenged him. He named him prime minister’s parliamentary secretary and secretary of state for multiculturalism, with a double mandate. The first, more political role requires that he make sure new immigrants integrate well. “People have to be able to conserve their identity as they are becoming integral parts of Canada,” Harper told him. “Multiculturalism cannot lead to the ghettoization of immigrants.” The other mandate is partisan: becoming the link between the government and cultural communities in order to increase the party’s odds of success in the next election. Kenney came to understand the magnitude of the task in March 2006, during one of his first meetings in his new role. A leader from the Korean community of Vancouver, a respected doctor, squarely asked him why Conservatives are racist and anti-immigration. Surprised, Kenney shot back that it was former prime minister John Diefenbaker who eliminated racial discrimination in the selection of immigrants, in 1962. Then he launched into a speech about the values they share: family, a strong work ethic, the fight against criminality. The Korean listened to him for a few minutes, then interrupted him. If the Korean community had voted for the NDP and the Liberals in Vancouver, he said, it was because those MPs helped immigrants settle and find housing. They became the face of Canadian authority. “Elected officials take part in our celebrations, they’re present in our media.” For Kenney, a light went on. “It woke me up,” he says. “I understood that I would have to be everywhere at all times. Personal contact is crucial for new immigrants.” Ever since then, the minister has been on the road three weekends out of four. Some Sundays, in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, he takes part in as many as 20 cultural activities, starting at dawn in a temple and ending in darkness at a partisan reception. “In the last election campaign, I’d done so many that I became confused: I bowed to the wrong God in a church. I looked completely ridiculous,” he admits, laughing. He only spends one day a month in his home riding of Calgary Southeast, which he’s represented since 1997. That didn’t stop him from being re-elected in 1997 with 76 per cent of the vote and a crushing lead of 42,000 votes—one of the country’s best results. “My voters understand that I work for the Conservative cause and that I have a full schedule,” Kenney says. It’s a rhythm he manages to maintain, but it doesn’t stop him from bottoming out from time to time. “When I see the weekend arrive with 20 or 25 scheduled events—not counting travel—I sometimes feel a profound fatigue take over. I have to motivate myself by thinking that every gesture will count over the long term,” he says. It’s also a physical challenge. “People from the communities like to touch you, to embrace you, to hug you, and physical contact isn’t my strong suit.” The minister has neither wife nor children. He shares his home in Alberta with his mom, Lynne, and has little time for friends or a love life. Those closest to him, however, don’t describe him as a loner. And he makes it a point to organize one or two receptions per year at his condo in Ottawa for his colleagues in government and Tory staffers. Building a trusting relationship between the government and immigrant communities has fast become Kenney’s priority. Six to 10 times per year, his team organizes “friendship days” on the Hill, where leaders from cultural communities—spiritual leaders, heads of community centres, presidents of ethnic chambers of commerce, etc.—can arrange to meet ministers of their choosing. “It gives a chance for the communities to be heard at the highest level in Ottawa, and they appreciate the gesture,” says Agop Evereklian, who was Kenney’s chief of staff from 2008 to 2010 and, until recently, chief of staff to former Montreal mayor Gerald Tremblay. That access, however, makes teeth grind on the Hill. “They receive unfair treatment—effectively unofficial lobbying,” says one civil servant who requested anonymity. The Kenney team has established itself as cabinet’s go-to brain trust on ethnic communities. They coordinate all the Prime Minister’s press releases to highlight different cultural holidays (Diwali, Vaisakhi, Yom Kippur, Chinese New Year). The apology and financial compensation for the Chinese head tax and the official recognition of the Armenian and Ukrainian genocides were also handled by Kenney. “He acts as a conductor to correct historical wrongs,” says Evereklian. “It might not seem important to the majority of the population, but for the concerned communities, it’s huge.” In 2008, Kenney put in place the Community Historical Recognition Program, with a $13.5-million budget to finance commemorative projects and the erection of statues to honour key historical figures. Italian, Jewish, Indian and Chinese communities have all profited abundantly from it. Kenney insisted that all his cabinet colleagues integrate into their inner circles Canadians of immigrant stock. His own staff is one of the most multi-ethnic, with political assistants in all the big cities who make connections with community leaders. It’s a veritable spiderweb that captures information in the field and transmits it to Ottawa every day. The minister follows news first-hand by closely following the ethnic media, which he has translated and reads every morning as he wakes up. “I look at it before I read the national papers,” he says. Kenney flips through a Chinese-Canadian newspaper he bought at a corner store en route to an event in Toronto. He asks his driver, who is of Chinese descent, to translate a few headlines and practises saying in Mandarin: “Hello, I am the minister of immigration.” His driver gives a full-throated laugh and tries to correct the accent of the minister, who is also enjoying himself. “Don’t you go making me look like an <banned word filter activated>,” Kenney says. “I’m counting on you.” The minister’s car stops in front of the Lucky Moose Food Mart on Dundas Street. A two-foot-tall pink moose guards the entrance. In 2009, the store made headlines when its owner, David Chen, took justice into his own hands when he caught a shoplifter red-handed. After a scuffle, he tied him up before calling police. The thief filed assault charges. The NDP and Conservatives took the opportunity to draft a bill to permit store owners to use “reasonable force” against intruders without facing charges. Today, photographers and journalists from the community wait for Kenney. He greets them in Mandarin, and buys a bottle of water and two more Chinese papers. He shakes Chen’s hand. Flashing cameras capture the moment. “We have kept our word,” he says. “We passed your bill into law.” Chen, who speaks broken English, contents himself with a smile. Later, Kenney tells me: “That story made a lot of noise in the Chinese press in Canada. That’s where I first heard about it.” From 2006 to 2011, the number of Canadians who speak Mandarin jumped 51 per cent. There are now three daily papers published in the language in the country, not to mention TV news programs, weekly magazines and websites. There is similar growth with every ethnic community, be they Indian, Korean, Ukrainian or Filipino. “Previously, the Conservative party was completely absent,” Kenney says. He turns the page of the newspaper, where he sees a photo of NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair at an event with the Chinese community in Richmond, in suburban Vancouver. “He seems to understand that this is important,” Kenney notes. In the downtown Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina, with its significant immigrant population, the minister is greeted by honking horns as he walks the sidewalk. People stop to talk to him. A woman in her 20s insists he is as well-known in the Chinese community as Justin Bieber. “I can walk for hours in Calgary without being recognized, but not here,” he says. Olivia Chow, the local New Democrat MP and widow of Jack Layton, admits that Kenney’s work forces MPs from other parties in ridings with sizable immigrant populations to “watch their backs.” “He’s a political animal,” she says. “He’s always there at the right moment, and his photo winds up in the papers.” In Kenney’s office, everything is carefully planned. Less than a month before the last election campaign, his director of multicultural affairs, Kasra Nejatian, sent a letter to MPs and Conservative operatives asking them to quickly collect $200,000 for an ethnic media ad buy. With a total value of $378,000, it had to launch March 20, 2011, the date of the first match in the Cricket World Cup, a popular event in Asia. Attached to the mailout was a 21-page document titled: “Breaking through: Building the Conservative brand in cultural communities.” Aimed at the Chinese, Jewish, Ukrainian and South Asian communities, the document outlined the Conservative strategy. “If Greater Toronto’s South Asians formed their own city, it would be the third-largest city in the country,” it read. The take-away points were neatly summed up: “There are lots of ethnic voters. There will be quite a few more soon. They live where we need to win.” Once charmed, the document added, ethnic communities could stay loyal for a very long time. Ten “very ethnic” ridings—where immigrants represent more than 20 per cent of the population—were targeted in pre-election Conservative advertising: four in Ontario, four in B.C., one in Quebec and one in Manitoba. On election day, May 2, the Conservative party won seven of them. The partisan document was printed on the official letterhead of Kenney’s ministry office—a point that drives New Democrat MP Pat Martin crazy. In this, he sees the perfect example of a government that has forgotten its neutrality and has thrown itself into serving the party’s political machine. “They violated all the rules in using government resources to solicit money for a party campaign,” says Martin. “It’s shocking. The minister should have resigned over it.” Certain colleagues compare Kenney to a beaver, not just because of his slightly round frame or his patriotism but because he never stops working. By the time his assistants get to the office at 7 a.m., the minister is already there. And at 8 p.m., when they head home, Kenney leaves the Hill and heads to Laurier Street in downtown Ottawa, to his second office at the Immigration ministry. He heads to the 21st floor, closes the door, plugs his iPod into the stereo and listens to classical music or Gregorian chants as he reads his files, which are sometimes delicate—notably cases where a person is being deported from the country and he has the power to authorize a reprieve. It’s generally during this second phase of his workday that he receives a call from 24 Sussex Drive. The Prime Minister often takes a few minutes, late in the night, to consult with Kenney (neither man sleeps much). The minister rarely heads home to his condo before midnight. Devoted to his work, at ease with media (he is one of few anglophone ministers to give interviews in French), Kenney has gradually become one of Ottawa’s most influential ministers, along with John Baird at Foreign Affairs and Jim Flaherty at Finance. He sits on the cabinet committee on priorities and planning, the only committee to meet weekly to formulate government strategy. “He is one of very few ministers to command Harper’s total faith,” says a source close to them both. The Toronto Marathon is paralyzing traffic this day, annoying Kenney, who likes to keep his schedule rolling. “Push back all appointments by 20 minutes, otherwise we’ll never make it,” he tells his assistant. The car moves at a snail’s pace as we cross Parkdale-High Park, one of Hogtown’s most important immigrant landing grounds. Through the window, the minister takes the time to show me around the disadvantaged riding represented by New Democrat Peggy Nash. He knows these communities, and their habits, by heart. There, a Vietnamese community centre; here, a Polish Catholic Church; there, two Romas pushing a shopping cart. All along King Street, it’s a Canada belonging to new immigrants and refugees, often disoriented and troubled. He pulls out the previous day’s Globe and Mail, which launched a series on immigration. The article states that Canada should be admitting one million new immigrants per year—four times what it now admits—to fuel economic growth. “That’s insanity,” says Kenney. “You need to allow people time to integrate. They need good salaries, good-quality jobs, not just quantity.” Above all, you need to consider perceptions, he adds, citing a recent Angus Reid poll that showed nearly one Canadian out of two (46 per cent) believes that immigration has a negative effect on the country—a five-point jump in a year. Almost 39 per cent of respondents believe immigration should stay at current levels, and 38 per cent think it should be reduced. “I need to assure myself that Canadians continue to have confidence in the system,” he says. “Immigration is an asset, but prejudices run deep. Opening the floodgates won’t help new Canadians.” Does Kenney have ambitions to succeed Harper? Among Conservative activists and party faithful, there is no doubt: Kenney will be waiting in the wings. His bilingualism and the formidable network he’s built at the heart of ethnic communities will be his greatest assets. Another indication of his intentions: he’s established a vast database to keep in contact with activists. A few times a year, they receive an email from Kenney outlining his achievements. Evereklian wouldn’t be surprised if Kenney took a run at the top job. “But he will never talk about it,” he says. “If anyone brings it up in his presence, he gets angry and puts the person in their place.” In an interview, Kenney carefully qualifies his answer, without closing the door. “I’m too busy to think about it. In Stephen Harper, we have the most efficient leader the conservative movement has ever seen, and he will be there a long time. It’s not possible for me to be good at my work if I think of that.” On a hot afternoon, in an industrial park in Mississauga, Kenney has been listening for more than 30 minutes to a dull speech from a Buddhist priest, sitting on the ground in the tiny Mahadhammika Temple of the Burmese community—which welcomes 500 refugees to Toronto every year. The minister finally gets up, a knowing smile spreading across his face. He starts by highlighting that Canada spent $35 million in 2010 to help Burma rebuild after a horrific typhoon. He repeats that Aung San Suu Kyi, celebrated figure of Burma’s democrats, was named an honorary Canadian by the Harper government. And then he delivers the goods: in his car, on the way to the temple, Kenney approved the refugee status of Burmese opposition leader Ler Wah Lo Bo, who arrived in Canada in 2002, but whose status was uncertain because of his contentious past in Burma. Screams and clapping shake the small prayer room, which is better used to Buddhist calm. Later, back in the car, Kenney notes the Conservatives won 24 of 25 suburban Toronto ridings: “Without the support of the ethnic communities, we could never have done that.” The Conservatives estimate that they captured 42 per cent of the country’s ethnic vote last election—more than 30 per cent of their total vote, and more than any other party. “I have no intention of stopping now.” A source close to the Prime Minister admits that the day after the election, many believed Kenney would change ministries and be given a promotion for his service to the cause. But the idea never crossed Harper’s mind. “He had too many important reforms under way, and the message sent to the cultural communities would be all wrong. After having courted and then obtained their vote, we take away their champion? No.” Although he sometimes wishes for a change of scene and a new challenge, Kenney refuses to complain. The minister feels the Conservative cause needs his efforts. After 15 minutes on the road, the car nears yet another event. Multicoloured turbans are more and more numerous. He starts listing the cities in suburban Toronto and Vancouver: Brampton, Mississauga, Richmond, Surrey, Etobicoke. A big part of the 30 seats that will be added to the House by the next election, in 2015, will come from these rapidly growing, increasingly multi-ethnic regions. He smiles. “It should be very good for us,” he says, taking a step toward the turbans.
  11. The Sikh Coalition, a US based community group, has launched FlyRights, an innovative mobile application that allows users to report instances of airport profiling in real time. Reports filed through the FlyRights app will be considered official, actionable complaints by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the group said. "FlyRights creates a novel marriage between technology and civil rights activism. It is the first and only mobile application created to combat racial profiling at airports," the coalition said. The application becomes available for download April 30 in the Apple App Store and the Android market. Asking its supporters to download FlyRights on their phones and start filing reports of unfair treatment at airports, the group said: "Policy will not change unless you make your voice heard." "This application is easy to use and will ensure that your voice will officially be heard by the TSA and DHS," it added. http://timesofindia....ow/12933526.cms
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