In its present form, IRPA and its accompanying regulations permit the minister to: increase the pass mark, R76(2) to limit the number of fresh applications as a means for managing the backlog; make use of “restricted occupations”, R73 and R75(2), to better match the flow of immigrants to the labour market needs in Canada; and facilitate the use of “arranged employment”, R82, whereby an offer of employment from a Canadian employer can speed up the processing of the application of the skilled worker the employer would like to hire.
I am appearing before you today because of a story my late grandfather told me when I was young and impressionable. He spoke of how his younger sister fled Poland just ahead of the Nazi occupation and how she managed to secure a residency permit in England, valid for one year. My grandfather did everything he possibly could to convince immigration authorities in Ottawa to allow her to join him in Canada. His plea fell on deaf ears--the door to Canada was shut. In the end, his sister was expelled from England back to Poland. She was never heard from again.
Truth be told, we haven’t always had an immigration policy to be proud of. I have been practicing immigration law for more than thirty years, and I state candidly that discriminatory discretion was only wrung completely from our immigration system, at least as it pertains to economic immigrants, in 2002 with the introduction of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA.
IRPA, in its present form, is an exquisite piece of legislation, whose beauty comes from the fact that the selection of economic immigrants is based purely on objective criteria. At its core is the fundamental principle that everyone who chooses to submit an application to come live in Canada is entitled to fair and equitable consideration.
The government is now proposing to amend IRPA through Bill C-50, which was tabled in the House of Commons on March 14, 2008. Under the proposed changes, the Minister of Immigration would have the authority to issue instructions to immigration officers related to the processing of applications--more specifically, instructions as to which type of applications to process quickly, which applications to hold for processing at a later date, and finally which type of applications to return to sender without any consideration at all.
These amendments would change our immigration selection system from one that provides fair consideration to all applications in the order they are received to a system based upon discretionary selection and outright denial of consideration. This would expose the immigration system to the type of discretion that IRPA eliminated. In practice, the minister will have to delegate the exercise of discretion to individuals within the department to carry out such instructions. This will unavoidably make Canada’s selection system vulnerable to human bias, or worse. I would like to place on record a copy of a post from the public forum located on my law firm’s website as a practical example of the danger of discretionary selection.
The minister states that these amendments are required to streamline and modernize the immigration system. In particular, the government intends to use the amendments to clear out the current backlog, consisting primarily of 600,000 skilled worker applications. In addition, the government desires the ability to prioritize applicants with occupations that are in high demand in the Canadian labour market.
The backlog exists because the number of new applications received every year is more than the number of visas issued during the year. IRPA regulation 76(2) foresees this eventuality. It empowers the minister to set the minimum number of points required to qualify as a skilled worker, keeping in view the “number of applications” currently being processed versus the target number of immigrant visas to be issued. The minister may, therefore, simply raise the pass mark above the current level of 67 points to curtail the number of fresh applications. People can count, and they won’t pay $550 in government processing fees only to be refused on the merits of their application.
The minister may also make use of “restricted occupations” as provided in IRPA regulations 73 and 75(2). After conducting the appropriate consultations with provincial governments and other relevant stakeholders, the minister may designate as restricted certain occupations for which there is little demand in the Canadian labour market. Potential applicants with experience in a restricted occupation would receive zero points for their work experience and therefore would have no incentive to apply. This would ensure that Canada selects a higher number of immigrants that meet the immediate labour market needs within the country.
Finally, the present legislation allows for “arranged employment” in Canada. A genuine job offer from a Canadian employer entitles an applicant to an immediate temporary work permit or accelerated processing of a permanent resident application. This allows the “best and brightest” to be brought to the head of the queue.
The subject of backlogs is more complicated than meets the eye. The government’s proposal gives the impression that the backlog is a single line of 600,000 applicants stretching as far as the eye can see. In fact, the reality is very different. Some visa offices have huge backlogs, with a five-year wait to simply be considered for immigration. Other visa offices can process an application to conclusion in a little more than a year. This situation is a direct result of the fact that the minister sets yearly targets for visa issuance at each visa office and assigns the resources necessary to achieve those targets.
Let’s compare how this all works out at two specific visa offices. In 2007, the target for economic class visas at the visa office in Buffalo was 24,500 against an inventory of 43,000 applications. The target for similar applications at the visa office in New Delhi was 10,500 visas against an inventory of 135,000 applications. How these targets are set is a whole other issue, but I’m leaving that aside.
The distribution of applications is, as noted above, quite uneven. If one were to turn off the tap for two or three years to clear out the existing backlog, some visa offices would have no applications to process at the end of year one and most visa offices would have very little inventory at the end of year two. Then in year three, the government would only be issuing visas to the remaining applicants, who would overwhelmingly be from India, the Philippines, and the Middle East. This is, of course, an untenable eventuality.
We should, therefore, expect that a new set of instructions will be issued at the end of year two, allowing the government to open the tap again at certain visa offices but not at other visa offices--i.e., New Delhi, Manila, and Damascus. Once you have a society that condones selectively closing its doors to applicants, even temporarily, it’s not a big step to becoming a society that is comfortable opening its doors only to some, but not to others. Canadians of Chinese, Jewish, and Italian descent won’t be shocked.
IRPA is fair and it can work. Let’s not shut our door.
I wish to place on record a recent posting on our law firm website’s public forum from an individual who purports to be a Canadian immigration officer. I am satisfied from all the evidence at my disposal that the person posting is, in fact, a Canadian immigration officer. Reference to the particular ethnic group identified in the posted message has been removed.
Posted in forum: Thursday, December 06, 2007, 8:26 a.m.
Here you will read the RANTing of a Canadian Immigration Officer. I've HAD IT!!!! I am so sick and tired of dealing with all the liars, cheats, frauds etc... This line of work has tainted me to the point that I can't even look at most immigrants anymore without pre-judging them as losers. Especially those from xxxxxxxx. I don't get the whole xxxxxxxx onslaught we're seeing now. Is xxxxxxxx such a shitty place to live? And why can't xxxxxxxx marry someone in the country where they live, why must they insist on marrying their brothers and sisters and cousins just for immigration purposes... yuck. I'm tired of finding so goddamn many immigrants who arrive here and jump on the welfare system before they've even been declared “landed”. Then they think they're fooling someone when they get off welfare for 2 months to submit a sponsorship application. I've seen so many phony marriages that I'm approaching the point where I wish they would remove spousal sponsorship as an option. If you can't find someone here worth spending your life with, MOVE. If only a guy/girl who currently lives in xxxxxxxx is worth marrying, then perhaps you should get your ass back to xxxxxxxx since obviously the quality people are all there. xxxxxxxx Immigrants have destroyed certain communities... xxxxxxxx for example has become xxxxxxxx part 2 (commonly referred to as xxxxxxxx). I feel sorry for any english speaking students in the schools in xxxxxxxx, because they're the true minority now. A recent news story showcased one school that has over 400 new kindergarden students, 93% of whom did not speak english... Well this felt good to rant a bit and I'll probably do more of this...but for now I have to go deny a few people entry to my country.