Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We will keep our opening comments as brief as we can. In addition to the individuals you already introduced, accompanying me today is Diane Johnston, who is senior program officer in the operational management and coordination branch in the operations sector at CIC. She is part of my team.
We do welcome the opportunity to appear before you today and to have the chance to present information that hopefully you will find useful in your deliberations around the motion that you are considering. I hope we will be able to fully answer all of your questions.
I would like to thank the committee for inviting us to speak to you today on the implications of the motion being proposed with respect to spousal sponsorships.
Family reunification is a key element of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. We recognize that keeping families together helps people integrate into Canadian society and contributes to their success. We believe our current policies reflect this goal.
Under the provisions of IRPA, there are measures in place which allow individuals who are already living in Canada to apply for permanent residence within Canada. There are two types of cases involved: those who are in status and those who are out of status. I will speak briefly to each of these types.
One is in-status applicants. Spouses and common law partners who are already in Canada may apply for permanent residence in the spouse or common law partner class in Canada. In order to be eligible under this class, applicants must live with their sponsoring spouse or common law partner in Canada, and they must have legal temporary status in Canada. While their applications are being processed, spouses and common law partners in the in-Canada class can apply to maintain their temporary resident status. In addition, once applicants have been confirmed as having met the eligibility requirements as spouses or common law partners in the in-Canada class, they can remain in Canada and apply for open work permits while the necessary background, security, and medical checks are done to obtain final approval.
This initial eligibility assessment, also known as approval in principle, plays an important role in preserving the integrity of Canada's immigration program. It ensures that CIC has determined that an applicant's relationship is genuine before he or she is eligible to apply for a work permit.
I would like to stress that while the majority of spousal applicants are in bona fide relationships, some do abuse our programs. To help prevent this abuse, CIC officers check an applicant's background, perform personal interviews, and examine evidence to ensure that the relationship is genuine, and to detect fraudulent relationships.
Our current policy of restricting access to open work permits until after approval in principle is obtained prevents applicants from using the spouse or common law partner in Canada class as an avenue to circumvent legitimate immigration processes.
The second is out-of-status applicants. Many applicants in the spouse or common law partner in Canada class have legal temporary status in Canada. However, for spouses and common law partners who are in Canada without legal immigration status, a public policy was introduced in 2005 to also allow these individuals, including failed refugee claimants, to apply for and be processed in the in-Canada class.
This public policy was implemented to facilitate family reunification in cases where spouses and common-law partners are already living together in Canada, but who may have certain technical inadmissibilities resulting in a lack of status.
These technical inadmissibilities include, for example, having overstayed their temporary status; working or studying without being authorized to do so; entering Canada without a valid passport, the required visa, or other documentation; and failed refugee claimants.
The ability to submit an application in these cases allows individuals to remain in Canada for a limited period of time—60 days—to facilitate the processing of the application to the approval in principle stage. However, during this time applicants are not allowed to apply for a work permit until they have obtained approval in principle. In addition to the initial 60-day deferral of removal, once an applicant has obtained approval in principle, a stay of removal is granted until a final decision on the application is made.
For individual cases, where a determination of eligibility is complex and may take longer than 60 days, CIC and CBSA consult to reach a decision on how best to proceed.
The current policy provides considerable flexibility to facilitate family reunification applications and processing from within Canada. In most cases, it allows people to stay while their applications are in process and once the bona fides of their application have been established, they are allowed to apply for an open work permit.
CIC and CBSA work closely together to ensure that these applications are processed in a timely fashion without undermining Canada's commitment to family reunification. We believe that our existing measures strike an appropriate balance between our family reunification goals and the need to maintain the integrity of the immigration system.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I now turn it over to Susan Kramer for her remarks.