Eastern Europe Needs Skilled Labour

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Over the past few decades, many of the political leaders in eastern Europe have focused their efforts on curbing the flow of migrants and asylum seekers, contending that an influx of third-country nationals would undermine social stability, threaten cultural cohesion and even pose a security risk.

For example, in 2015, at the height of the European Union’s migration crisis, the four Visegrad countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) opposed the EU’s refugee-quota system, which aimed to share the burden by allocating a certain number of asylum seekers to each EU country based on population, GDP and other factors. Hungary and Slovakia were among the most vocal critics of the plan, arguing that mandatory quotas were an attack on national sovereignty.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban champions a homogenous Hungary. In Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico’s left-populist Smer-Social Democracy party won the 2023 election by exploiting resentment against even Ukrainian refugees. This has helped such leaders to consolidate electoral support by playing on voters’ fears of economic anxiety and desire for stability in an unsettled world.

But the region is facing an acute shortage of skilled workers. So these countries are increasingly liberalising their immigration rules and procedures to enable the entry and employment of skilled foreigners. In January, Hungary passed a new immigration law that introduces new short-term guest and skilled-worker visas. It was accompanied by new ways to improve the efficiency of visa processing in countries such as Oman, Qatar and Uzbekistan.

Hungary has little choice. Labour shortages in the coming years would hamper the government’s ambition to become an electric vehicle manufacturing country. In 2022, China’s CATL announced that it would build a $7.9 billion EV battery plant in the eastern Hungarian city of Debrecen, its biggest overseas investment in Europe to date, to supply German carmakers BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen.

 In late 2023, China’s BYD, one of the world’s largest electrical vehicle manufacturers, announced it would open its first European EV production factory in Hungary. BYD will construct the plant near the southern Hungarian city of Szeged and is expected to provide thousands of jobs to the region.

The Chinese manufacturer has already located in Hungary. In 2017 it opened its first European factory in Komarom, where, among other things, electric buses are produced, and in the fall of 2023, it started selling its passenger cars in Budapest. 

 The German defence contractor Rheinmetall recently opened a new factory in the Hungarian city of Zalaegerszeg, while armoured tactical vehicles are to be produced in the city of Gyor. All of these ventures will require sufficient human capital.

The Czech Republic in September 2022 simplified the recruitment process for “critically needed” workers and improved oversight of working conditions for foreigners. This allows the Czech government to offer more favourable residence conditions to some third-country nationals, making the Czech Republic more competitive as a destination for talent.

This past summer, Prague implemented a regulation that grants free access to the Czech labour market for citizens of nine selected countries: Australia, Japan, Canada, South Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, and Israel. They do not need to obtain any employment permit to work in the Czech Republic, but only a residence permit.

The number of foreign workers in Slovakia increased seven-fold between 2013 and 2022, with some manufacturers, such as the British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover, relying heavily on labour from abroad. And more of these workers are coming from farther away, from India or Kazakhstan rather than Serbia or Ukraine.

But there is still a need for tens of thousands more workers, especially in the mechanical engineering, automotive, transport, healthcare and IT sectors. So, like the Czech Republic, Slovakia also streamlined its procedures to attract foreign workers last summer.

The labour shortage in eastern Europe is likely to worsen: demand for skills in the industries of the future is only increasing, at the same time as fertility rates are declining and young people are leaving the region to pursue better opportunities elsewhere.

To plug these competency gaps, countries must continue to reform their immigration policies. Failure to do so could result in widespread economic pain, as they may miss out on new investments that could generate GDP growth and raise tax revenue.

The question is not whether immigration is good or bad, but how it can yield benefits for both destination countries and third-country workers.

 

Jews in Today’s South Africa Feel Embattled

By Henry Srebrnik, [Winnipeg] Jewish Post

Since the Gaza war began last year, South African Jews feel like they are cats on a hot tin roof.

While South African Jews have risen to prominence and helped build the country, there is a deep-seated fear of the current government and for the community’s safety, because for the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the Palestine issue is a deeply felt ideological cause.

South African public opinion is vehemently pro-Palestinian. This was already the case before the current war, and since then, tensions have only increased. In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, South Africa’s International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor held high-level discussions with senior members of Hamas, a move that was met with criticism.

South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein condemned the government at a pro-Israel rally. After Pandor’s diplomatic outreach to Hamas, Goldstein changed the Prayer for the Republic of South Africa, said regularly at congregations across the country, from asking God to protect “the president and the deputy president all members of the government,” to asking for protection for “all the people of this country,” a measure, he wrote in a letter to South African rabbis, that was taken in “extreme situations, for government violations of morality so grotesque they undermine the integrity of praying.”

To the estimated 60,000 South African Jews, their government appears to have shown little empathy for the Jewish victims of terror. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), the umbrella organization that represents the country’s Jewish community, has noted a sharp increase in antisemitism.

Since then, the South African government, with broad popular support, has accused Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). For many Jewish groups in the country, the decision to side against Israel was seen as evidence of antisemitism.

Now, the city of Johannesburg plans to rename the road on which the American consulate is located after Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled. It was proposed by a former mayor, Thapelo Amad. Sandton Drive, its current name, is a central artery in Johannesburg, and Sandton, the neighbourhood in which the road is located, is home to many of South Africa’s Jews. The area is also home to at least four synagogues among other Jewish institutions.

Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who is now 80 years old, gained infamy in 1969 when she was part of a group who hijacked a Trans World Airlines flight on a journey from Rome to Tel Aviv, Israel. She became known as the first woman to hijack a plane.

 “We stand with Hamas, Hamas stands with us, together we are Palestine and Palestine will be free,” Amad posted online. “With our souls, with our blood, we will conquer Al Aqsa.” 

All of this is now reshaping how many South African Jews view themselves, their place in the country and their relationships with their fellow citizens. It is in this crucible that they are now forced to reconcile their own complex history in South Africa with the reality of a country whose national identity is increasingly built in opposition to a foreign country, Israel, that they hold dear.

Indeed, most Jewish institutions in South Africa today are oriented toward Israel. Herzlia, the primary Jewish school in Cape Town, is named after Theodor Herzl, and its motto (“Im Tirtzu”) is based on the famous Zionist line about willing Israel into existence.

The school has been the center of controversy, as the hard-left Economic Freedom Fighters political party last year called for it to be deregistered with the government, a move that would cause it to lose funding, for being too “pro-Israel.” Among other issues, the party cited the high number of Herzlia graduates who move to Israel and join the Israeli military. The exact number of Herzlia alumni who do so is unclear, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a highly contentious topic.

The rhetoric reached a boiling point last December, when a speaker at a large pro-Palestine rally in Cape Town targeted Herzlia directly, saying, “We know where the murderers come from -- they come from Herzlia, here in Cape Town.” After the rally, the foreign ministry said it would investigate if any citizens were serving in the Israeli military and arrest any that had. These events were used by Jewish authorities as evidence of their threatened status in South Africa.

The South African Jewish community traces its lineage almost exclusively to the Lithuanian Jews who fled Europe before and during the Holocaust. They arrived in a country where they were greeted with skepticism. There were undeniable pockets of support for Nazism among some political parties at the time.

When the Afrikaner-led National Party took power in 1948, however, it didn’t elevate these views into the political discourse. Instead, the party focused on creating the apartheid system of minority rule and gaining the full support of all white citizens, including Jews.

Jews were significantly over-represented in the struggle against apartheid, with many in the ANC, but most lived with it. Not until 1985 did Jewish community leaders condemn it outright. As Cyril Harris, chief rabbi from 1987 to 2004, later told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “The Jewish community benefited from apartheid and an apology must be given.”

Many South African Jews today, though, fear that the country may fall into economic ruin. Israel has always been viewed as an exit plan thanks to its Law of Return, which grants them automatic Israeli citizenship.

The Influential Indian Community in America

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Most people now know that the Democratic Party candidate in the upcoming American presidential election, Kamala Harris, had a very impressive Indian mother, originally from Tamil Nadu state. Less well known is that the wife of Republican vice-presidential hopeful, J.D. Vance, is also Indian.

Usha Chilukuri Vance was raised by Indian immigrants from the state of Andhra Pradesh and grew up in an ethnically diverse San Diego suburb. Her father, Krish Chilukuri, is an aerospace engineer and university lecturer, and her mother, Lakshmi, is a professor of molecular biology and provost at the University of California at San Diego.

Chilukuri Vance received her BA degree in history from Yale in 2007 and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge in England in 2009, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

After graduating from Yale Law School in 2013, she spent a year clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he served as an appeals court judge in Washington, followed by a year as a law clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts.

 “My parents are Hindu. That is one of the reasons why they made such good parents. That made them very good people,” she told an interviewer recently.

All this by way of introduction to one of America’s fastest growing and successful ethnic groups.  Indians constitute just under 1.5 per cent of the country’s population, some 4.6 million people, two thirds of whom are Hindu or consider themselves close to Hinduism. And they have punched way above their weight in just about every field.

There were few Indians in the United States prior to 1965. All this changed with that year’s Immigration and Nationality Act, which replaced the racist 1924 Immigration Act. 

Indian Americans today have the highest median household income in the U.S. by ethnic group, almost twice that of white households. About 75 per cent have college degrees, including 40 per cent with postgraduate degrees. They also dominate the elite, competitive academic public high schools. They own 60 per cent of all hotels.  One in every 20 doctors in the U.S. is Indian, as is one in every 10 students entering medical school. 

Indian Americans have made their names in countless fields, from tech (Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna) to science (Nobel laureate in chemistry Venkatraman Ramakrishnan) to literature (Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri) to journalism (Ali Velshi).

Indian academic deans like Chilukuri Vance’s mother are found at top American business schools, including the universities of Chicago, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern and New York. Indian American kids even dominate the National Spelling Bee contests! 

No surprise, then, that Indians are now fielding political candidates on the national stage. Being a relatively wealthy and highly educated voter group helps that engagement, as politically minded Indian Americans can access resources and fundraise from within the community. 

“What you’re seeing now is a virtuous circle in which people are starting to run for office. They’re getting political donations from their friends, their social networks, but even communities across the country who are excited and proud of their candidacy,” according to Karthick Ramakrishnan of AAPI Data, an organization studying the political attitudes of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

There are now five Indian Americans in Congress and nearly 40 in state legislatures. Two candidates who made a splash in the Republican primaries earlier this year were the tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, Indian Americans have a largely positive view of India, with 76 per cent seeing it favorably.

America’s Indian community is also affected by India’s own political shifts. For the past few decades, India’s version of Hindu nationalism, known as Hindutva, is making strides not just in India but also in its diaspora.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now rules India, finds increasing support in the American Indian diasporas. A Pew Research Centre report notes that 51 per cent see him very favorably.

In 2015, the Chicago billionaire industrialist Shalabh Kumar set up the Republican Hindu Coalition, and he reportedly extolled Modi as his idol. He poured money into Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Trump even recorded a message in Hindi.

During a recent three-day visit to the United States, Modi, along with the prime ministers of Australia and Japan, attended the sixth QUAD Leaders’ summit hosted by Joe Biden.

Modi met with some 15,000 Indian Americans Sept. 22 at the “Modi & US: Progress Together” rally at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, NY. “Wherever I travel, every leader praises the Indian diaspora,” he told them. Calling the Indians settled in the United States “ambassadors,” the prime minister thanked the Indian community in the United States for the respect India has earned in that country

 “This is the American Indian spirit” that “is taking India-U.S. relations to new heights.” India has decided to open two new consulates in Boston and Los Angeles.

The historian and journalist Vijay Prashad sees a growing neoconservative chauvinism in the community, which he calls “Yankee Hindutva,” complete with a Hindu lobby that is beginning to rival any other ones in terms of its political clout.