Migration will be a major issue in this century. We want and need this program to work better.
The United Church has several recommendations on this issue.
First, invest financial and human resources to reduce processing times and to address the backlog. A humanitarian program that takes three to four years is not humanitarian.
Another suggestion is to make visa-office-referred cases available in a timely fashion. The United Church has sponsors waiting to help today, but sadly, we can't get enough VOR cases or a way of working that meets our needs.
Hoping to model change, the United Church piloted a visa-office-referred project. It worked well, and at its conclusion we committed to taking at least 20 VOR referrals annually. The problem is, there has been no delivery on this by CIC, and we can't work alone.