The idea of America is something like a Rorschach test — a vast, messy spill whose outlines one fills with their dreams and aspirations, fears and expectations.
In the ink, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, an 18th-century French immigrant and perhaps the most eloquent eulogist of the American experience, saw what America was not. Unlike Europe, it wasn’t a rancid society underpinned by hoary structures. “Here, there are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops,” he writes in “Letters From an American Farmer,” his account of provincial farming life in then-colonial New York first published in 1782. Here’s what America was: a tabula rasa, an open space and a catalyst that could sublimate woe and apathy into prosperity and shared purposefulness. “In this great American asylum … the idle may be employed, the useless become useful, and the poor become rich,” Crèvecoeur writes, foreshadowing the 20th-century American dream. At the time, this promise drew a great profusion of Swedes, Germans, English, Scots, Irish and French. On the face of it, I have little in common with Crèvecoeur — I’m no nobleman; my forebears were German peasants. But I’m a Frenchman, too, and a visitor to this country. Like him, I’ve had a first-row seat to this country’s quest to decipher its own identity. Two hundred forty years after the publication of his letters, the central question spanning his writing still gives off a burning glow: “What … is the American, this new man?” To start answering that question, Pittsburgh is as good a place as any. There, the Cathedral of Learning, a 535-foot-tall Gothic edifice of stone and steel, towers over the Oakland neighborhood. On the first and third floors of the building, set under cavernous, arched ceilings, visitors find “nationality rooms.” Each was gifted by one of the ethnic communities that helped build the City of Bridges — and, by extension, America. Here’s the Swedish Room, all in beige tones and furnished with an 18th-century farmhouse-style fireplace. The Chinese Room typifies imperial palace architecture, with walls painted a cherry red and intricate ceiling panels swirling with dragons. Columns in the Greek Room espouse the ionic style of the Acropolis’ Erechtheion; 10 chairs around a wooden table bear the names of famous Hellenic locales and philosophers, carved on the seats. All three were dedicated before 1942. Today, a total of 31 rooms have taken on foreign accents — Syrian, Ukrainian and Korean, among others. In 2019, ceremonial dancers from the Filipino community advanced in procession inside the cathedral to the melody of a kulintang — a traditional instrument consisting of bronze gongs lined up on a frame. They were celebrating the opening of the Philippine Room, the latest addition to this modern tower of Babel. The monument is a testament to the elasticity of America’s fabric and the ever-expanding definition of Americanness. When he laid out his vision for the building in the 1920s, Chancellor John Bowman probably hadn’t anticipated just how diverse America would become. The building now has 31 “nationality rooms,” and two more have been spoken for by local Iranian and Finnish groups, but there’s only so much space. Meanwhile, beyond these finite physical walls, new ethnic groups and nationalities keep building spaces of their own. Traveling across the nation today, Crèvecoeur would find a landscape dotted with mosques and Buddhist and Hindu temples. Were he to sojourn in Las Vegas, he could saunter about a sprawling Asian Night Market. Further East, he’d find a vibrant community of refugees from the Congo in Grand Rapids, Michigan, served by no less than 11 Congolese houses of worship. In Miami, he’d stumble upon newly arrived Venezuelans — a burgeoning community. Pushing through the door of an Ethiopian restaurant in Washington, D.C., he’d be able to feast on Ye’ater Kik Alicha we’t, a meal of yellow split peas cooked with oil, onions, garlic, curry and ginger. The nation’s capital is home to the largest concentration of Ethiopians in the U.S. The forces that drive and draw immigrants away from their homes are manifold. Some, like me, are eager to avail themselves of the opportunities afforded by one of the world’s largest job markets. Many others flee abject poverty or political, religious or ethnic persecution. Consider the Lhotshampa. These ethnic Nepalis have been living in neighboring Bhutan since the 17th century, but starting in the 1990s, repressive elites moved to expel them from the country, which became the “world’s biggest creator of refugees per capita.” The U.S. started taking in these Bhutanese in 2007, and more than 80,000 have since resettled here, including in Texas and Georgia. American residents looking to move to Canada have more than 100 immigration pathways to choose from. Canadians are generally welcoming to immigrants. Due to demographic factors such as a shrinking labour force and a low natural birth rate, the government looks to immigration to help grow the Canadian population. Each year, about 1% of Canada’s overall population growth is thanks to immigration. For 2022 alone, Canada wants to welcome more than 431,000 newcomers. That number is so far set to increase over the next two years. Although Canada’s immigration system took a blow during the pandemic, Canada’s immigration minister, Sean Fraser, said that application processing speeds would resume to their standard by the end of the calendar year. Furthermore, Canada’s main immigration pathway, the Express Entry system, is set to resume inviting skilled workers on July 6. New applicants are expected to see their applications processed in six months. Here is an overview of some of Canada’s most popular economic immigration pathways, and an introduction to family sponsorship. Express EntryExpress Entry is an online application management system for three Canadian immigration programs: the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP), the Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP), and the Canadian Experience Class (CEC). Express Entry was created to offer a shorter pathway to permanent residency, compared to the previous paper-based application system. The processing standard is six months for 80% of applicants, however, people who applied during the pandemic are generally seeing much longer wait times. The CEC is the top Express Entry program for candidates who are already in Canada. In order to be eligible candidates need at least one year of Canadian work experience in a skilled occupation. Provincial Nominee ProgramAlmost all of Canada’s provinces and territories, except Nunavut and Quebec, have a Provincial Nominee Program (PNP). There are two types of PNPs: “enhanced” programs, which are aligned with Express Entry; and “base” programs which operate independently from the Express Entry system. Enhanced programs pull from the Express Entry pool of candidates. If you receive a provincial nomination through one of these PNPs, you get 600 CRS points added to your overall score. This award will push you to the top of the pool, priming you to receive an ITA in a subsequent Express Entry draw. Family-Class SponsorshipCanada allows citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their spouse, common-law partner, children, or parents and grandparents. Canadians can only sponsor relatives like a brother, sister, aunt or uncle in specific circumstances. They cannot sponsor relatives who are considered criminally or medically inadmissible.
Spouses and common-law partners can either be sponsored from inside Canada or in another country. To be eligible you have to be over the age 18, and in an ongoing, genuine relationship with a Canadian who can financially support you and any children you may have. Canadian citizens can sponsor from abroad, but permanent residents must be in the country. If you both want to wait out the process in Canada, as the foreign spouse or common-law partner you may be able to get a spousal Open Work Permit. Prince Edward Island has issued 136 invitations under the PEI Provincial Nomination Program (PEI PNP). The draw was held on June 16. A total of 127 invitations were under the Labour and Express Entry streams. Nine invitations were issued under PEI’s business impact and work permit stream with a minimum point threshold of 65. The total number of invitations for this draw is less than the most recent draw on May 20, when 153 invitations were issued. PEI schedules its provincial nomination draws a year in advance with draws typically occurring once each month. Since July 2021, 1,174 invitations have been issued under the PEI PNP, with 826 of them being issued in 2022. The Provincial Nominee ProgramCanadian provinces and territories (with the exception of Quebec and Nunavut) operate their own PNPs. Although provincial nomination is different from permanent residence, it can significantly increase the chances of obtaining permanent resident status from Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). PEI PNP Express Entry CategoryCandidates who wish to apply for provincial nomination under the PEI Express Entry Category must also be eligible for the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP), the Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP) or the Canadian Experience Class (CEC). Labour Impact CategoryThe Labour Impact category operates as a base stream nomination, independent of Express Entry. The category is split into three streams. Regardless of which of these pathways a candidate applies for, they must have a valid job offer in PEI and support from their employer.
Business Impact CategoryThe Business Impact category is for eligible candidates who wish to establish, own, and operate a business in PEI.
The Biden administration has directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to generally refrain from seeking the deportation of U.S. military veterans or service members and their immediate family members, according to a directive published on Tuesday. In a May 23 memo, interim ICE head Tae Johnson instructed the agency's deportation agents to consider prior U.S. military service as a "significant mitigating factor that weighs against" placing immigrants in deportation proceedings. If an immigrant veteran is eligible for U.S. citizenship because of his or her service, ICE officials "should generally not take civil enforcement actions against the noncitizen, absent significant aggravating factors," Johnson wrote in his directive. Johnson said ICE will not seek to deport active-duty U.S. service members, "absent significant aggravating factors being present in the case." Any decision to place veterans or service members in deportation proceedings must be approved by top ICE officials at local offices, Johnson added. The May 23 directive also requires ICE agents to consider refraining from issuing deportation orders against parents, spouses or children of U.S. service members or veterans, directing them to seek approval from agency leaders before taking enforcement actions against this group.
Under the new policy, ICE will need to ask all immigrants it processes whether they have served or are serving in the U.S. military, and whether they have immediate family members who are U.S. veterans or service members. For decades, deportation agents at ICE and its now-defunct predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, have been instructed to consider military service when deciding whether to seek the deportation of an immigrant. But a 2019 report by the Government Accountability Office, a congressional investigative agency, found that ICE did not properly track cases of veterans it deported or placed in deportation proceedings, partly because it did not require agents to ask immigrants about military service. In an interview Tuesday, ICE chief of staff Jason Houser said the May 23 directive is "not a total ban" on placing immigrant veterans or service members in deportation proceedings. He said the policy is designed to ensure military service is uniformly and consistently considered by ICE agents. "There are of course circumstances where there is still going to be potential for veterans to be removed," Houser said, confirming that a serious criminal conviction could prompt the deportation of an immigrant who served in the military. In most cases, noncitizens must be permanent U.S. residents to join the armed services. While U.S. law places immigrant service members on an expedited path to U.S. citizenship if they meet some requirements, it also allows ICE agents to arrest and deport legal permanent residents if they are convicted of certain crimes, regardless of their military service. Crimes that make legal permanent residents deportable include serious ones like homicide and sexual assault, as well nonviolent offenses, such as drug-related convictions. Johnson's memo instructs ICE personnel to consider a veteran or service member's years of service, deployment in a conflict zone, wartime medals, the type of discharge, any injuries suffered in battle, post-traumatic stress disorder or sexual trauma during service, court martial proceedings and other factors when determining whether to issue a deportation order against them. The analysis, Johnson wrote, should also consider the type of criminal convictions, the circumstances surrounding them, the sentences and "any evidence of rehabilitation." Houser, a U.S. Navy veteran, said the new rules could help immigrant veterans and service members with criminal convictions that might have stemmed from a post-traumatic stress disorder after combat. When all-program Express Entry draws resume in July, the number of invitations could resemble pre-pandemic figures, according to an internal briefing memo obtained by CIC News through an access to information request. Although the estimated number of invitations issued in each round was redacted, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) memo said the draw size would be consistent with the average number of invitations issued pre-pandemic. All-program draws in 2020 before March 18 ranged between 3,400 and 4,500. In 2019, all-program draws ranged from 3,200 to 3,900. The memo, dated March 28, said maintaining the pause until the end of June will allow IRCC to process new applications in six months. The current inventory of Express Entry applications is enough for IRCC to meet admissions targets for 2022. However, in order to meet targets for 2023 invitation rounds will need to resume between July and September. How the Pandemic Affected Express EntryBefore the pandemic, IRCC would invite Express Entry candidates from all programs to apply for permanent residence roughly every two weeks. Program-specific draws were held only occasionally.
The pandemic changed that. When the border closed in March 2020, IRCC shifted its strategy to hold program-specific draws. For the first few months of the pandemic, only Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) and Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates were invited to apply. IRCC continued to hold draws for these candidates in an effort to meet its record-breaking immigration targets amid travel restrictions. CEC candidates, who are most often already in Canada, were less likely to be affected by travel restrictions, and so IRCC continued holding draws for them. PNP candidates were invited because of the federal government’s commitment to supporting provincial immigration goals. Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) candidates were left out because a large percentage of them are overseas, and were not able to land in Canada amid travel restrictions. Brussels wants to create more legal pathways for skilled migrants to move to the European Union in order to curb illegal migration, but experts are skeptical about whether it goes far enough.
Between two and three million third-country nationals (TCNs) settle annually in the EU to work or study while up to 200,000 people arrive in the 27-country bloc illegally, according to the Commission. Yet Europe struggles with severe labour shortages which have been growing over the past decades and are expected to be exacerbated further as the population continues to trend older and as the bloc seeks to transform its economy to become greener and more digital. According to an assessment commissioned by the European parliament and released in September 2021, "labour shortages are noted for high-skilled and low-skilled work". That's partly because most of the valid permits emitted are done so for family reunification with less than one in five residence permits issued for work reasons. Additionally, just 1.6 % of first-time residence permits issued in 2019 to third-country nationals were under the Blue Card Directive — an EU-wide scheme to attract highly-qualified workers. The sectors forecast to struggle the most in the future include health care, agriculture, forestry and fishery, and information and communications technology, according to a 2020 public consultation. Work permit possibilities for bringing foreign workers to Canada without having to go through the LMIA.
If you fall under one of these exemptions, you may be permitted to hire a temporary foreign worker without doing a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) or even bring somebody to work in Canada without a work permit. The International Mobility Program (IMP) is a work permit program run by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to promote the country's social, economic, and cultural interests. These work permits are exempt from the LMIA because the government has concluded that the foreign worker's work will provide a "substantial advantage" to Canada, or because the exemption is based on a reciprocal agreement between Canada and the foreign worker's country. You won't have to go through the LMIA process if your hiring situation fits under one of IRCC's LMIA exemption codes or a work permit exemption. You must pay an employer compliance fee and submit an offer of employment through the IRCC's Employer Portal before hiring a foreign worker under the IMP. Employers in Quebec do not require a Quebec Acceptance Certificate (CAQ) to hire through the IMP. The following are some of the LMIA-exempt work permit and work permit exempt programs in Canada. A total of $59.2 billion financial loss and a 53 percent decrease in contribution to GDP has been caused by the Coronavirus pandemic to Canada’s travel and tourism sector last year.
In addition, the devastating situation provoked by the COVID-19 left 373,000 people engaged in the country’s travel and tourism sector jobless, facing many difficulties. According to WTTC’s Senior Vice President, Virginia Messina, such losses revealed by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) ’s Economic Impact Report (EIR) have left “huge numbers of people fearing for the future”. Based on EIR’s report, in 2019, Canada’s travel and tourism sector contribution to GDP was $111.6 billion or 6.4 percent, while just 12 months later, it marked a 3.2 percent decrease to $52.4 billion. In addition, the number of women, youth, and minorities employed in the travel and tourism sector in the North American country declined from 1.8 million in 2019 to 1.4 million in 2020, or (20.9 percent decrease). Domestic visitor spending decreased by 51 percent last year. In comparison, international spending dropped by 71.1 percent due to stringent travel restrictions imposed to prevent the virus’s further spread. Even though the decrease in the travel and tourism sector was profound last year, the figures could have been worse if not for the government’s Emergency Wage Subsidy scheme, which helped employers keep their jobs amid the COVID-19 situation, EIR’s report stressed. “However, the situation could have been far worse if it were not for the government’s Emergency Wage Subsidy scheme which supported up to 75 percent of wage subsidy to eligible employers and in turn, allowed many to keep their jobs in the suffering Travel & Tourism sector,” WTTC’s Senior Vice President pointed out. Read more details about this news here. Many people find traveling enlightening, exhilarating and a very enjoyable way of learning about the world and themselves. Travel allows for the meeting of fascinating people and exotic cultures while providing much-needed relaxation time. Using these tips will help you while you are traveling.
Carrying an excessive amount of valuables can put you at risk for theft or interrupt the fun of your trip if they are lost or damaged. Valuables attract attention and increase your risk of being a victim of theft. Be careful, and remember any food allergies while visiting other countries. If your food allergy is particularly bad, make sure to express this in their language. That way you can ask the waitstaff if their selections have the allergen in their ingredients. When traveling abroad, be on the lookout for criminals who may be posing as law or government officials. Keep your visa on you at all times, and do not hand it over to anyone. If they want to take you in, make sure you walk with them. Perhaps the most important thing is to never allow yourself to enter a strange person's vehicle. Pack some clothespins for your next vacation. Clothespins are not a typical travel item for many people, but should be reconsidered given their usefulness and versatility. Travel is a great way to educate family members. With reasonable preparations and precautions, there's nothing to fear from the developing world. Traveling to very different cultures will show your children what the rest of the world looks like. This is a wonderful way to create an understanding of the rest of the world and to build tolerance of others. A motorcycle is a wonderful way to travel. It's easy on gas, maneuverable and fun to ride. You can have a lot of fun traveling by motorcycle. There is a remarkable amount of plant life and beautiful views in deserts. The first time you visit the desert, you are sure to be awed by the vast expanses of open space and the breathtaking austerity and majesty. The desert is definitely a mustn't miss destination. If you need to leave your vehicle at the airport for the duration of your travels then always pre-book airport parking well in advance. Parking on your first vacation day may cost a lot. It is always preferable to take a taxi or have a friend drop you off if you are able. Use environmentally responsible services to ensure your vacation is eco-friendly. Many hotels offer recycling, energy-efficient appliances, low-flow showers, and even renewable energy. Car rental companies, tour operators, restaurants and other service providers are implementing ways that allow travelers to be able to travel green. As previously mentioned, traveling can give you great insight into the world, giving adventurous individuals the opportunity to get away from the grind of daily life and become more worldly. After putting the tips you learned to use, any traveler will be able to have an exciting journey that will inspire a lifetime of travel. |