Mr. Chair, thank you very much for allowing this motion to stand and for having a discussion about this.
Right now the majority of Canadian applicants, if they are married to someone who is visiting or someone who is in Canada, are allowed to apply for the spouse in Canada. After all, we don't want a couple to be separated, especially in their newly married life. Sometimes we have noticed that the couple have a child. It is especially difficult with a Canadian or a person who's being sponsored, if they are pregnant or if they have a newborn baby, that they get sent back home, only to be sponsored to come back into Canada eventually.
So a few years ago, in 2005, the immigration regulations changed to allow those people to apply in Canada. Unfortunately, there is one little section of people who are now not allowed to do so. What is happening now is that there are probably over a thousand cases--we don't know the number exactly--where a Canadian would sponsor a person.... There was a person who came to my attention who was sponsored by a Canadian wife and the application has taken eight months. He has now overstayed his legal status by about two weeks. He is being deported. The irony of it is if he goes back to his home country, the entire application process has to start all over again. This means that it's going to be very costly for Canada to pay for his deportation to get him out of the country, and then he would have to apply and all the work that the Canadian government has done to review his file and all the work that he and his wife have done in Canada will completely go to waste. He'll get deported back to a place like China and then he will line up just to have his entire application reviewed again.
It is costly both for the applicants and the Canadians in Canada. It's also costly for the Canadian government. So it makes no sense.
This motion in front of you is in fact to allow all in-Canada spousal sponsorship to be done in Canada so that you do not remove a person, which I believe is the intention anyway. What's happening is the Canada Immigration Centre said yes, we will fast-track these cases, but CBSA in the meantime said they were going to proceed with their removal. What needs to take place is CBSA saying let's not deport while CIC is processing the application.
Mr. Telegdi has a brilliant amendment, which is in front of you as a motion that's coming up next. It's to allow that applicant to work in Canada. It makes absolute sense. While the applicant is in Canada, why should this person have to go on welfare or something of that nature if that person is fully entitled to work, as I believe is the case for refugee applicants.