Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 8th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Yes, sir.

[Fan Gu, Coordinator, Sponsor our Parents]

My name's Fan Gu.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

And last but not least....

[Qun Li, Coordinator, Sponsor our Parents]

I'm Qun Li.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you very much.

One of you will have up to five minutes to make a presentation to us. Who will that be?

Felix Zhang. Sir, you may proceed. If you could speak for up to five minutes, we would appreciate that.

[Felix Zhang]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the committee for inviting me to speak on behalf of the Sponsor our Parents group.

My name is Felix Zhang and I am the coordinator of Sponsor our Parents group, which has more than 1,300 members who are sponsoring their parents or grandparents to immigrate to Canada.

I would like to draw the committee's attention to what our members are concerned about and what we are struggling with during the wait time for family reunification.

Firstly, the current wait time of parents' and grandparents' immigration has been significantly longer than a few years ago. Their first-step sponsorship application at the Mississauga office takes more than 41 months right now. After that, it will take an additional few years for the second-step immigration application at CIC overseas offices.

Given the current inventory and annual visa targets, those who are submitting applications now would wait 10 to 15 years or even longer to reunite parents in Canada. Our members think the wait time is way too long and becomes impractical for old parents and grandparents. Many of them do not believe their parents could live that long to make it. In fact, I'm personally aware of at least four cases where the parents passed away during the wait.

There's a comment from a group member. He said his father waited to see them again but passed away without even getting to hold his grandchild. He asked to please not make us wait too long to meet our lonely parents who we, the hardworking, law-abiding residents of Canada, turn into guilt-bearing, depressed souls. How sad is that?

Secondly, the processing times of immigration applications among CIC overseas offices are extremely imbalanced. As per the CIC website, the processing times of parents and grandparents class vary from 11 months to 44 months across the world. Our survey results suggest that most cases submitted to Buffalo in the last six months have been finalized in four or five months. However, applications submitted to the Beijing office in 2007 are still waiting.

Our members strongly believe it is totally unfair that some sponsors have to wait much longer than others solely because their parents live in different countries or even in the same country but in different provinces.

Thirdly, the wait time of the entire immigration process is highly unpredictable. CIC does not have any service standards or estimations of the processing times. It is unclear how many cases are in the backlog and how many visas will be issued on an annual basis. Our members are very stressed when their parents ask for the timeline of the immigration process. They simply have no answer, have no clue about how long it's going to take.

Our members are very frustrated with the current practices of the parents and grandparents sponsorship immigration and urge CIC to reduce the wait time within a reasonable timeframe, balance the processing times among visa offices to ensure equitable global service, and improve the transparency of the processes.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, sir.

Members of the committee, we still don't have Mr. Kurland, so we'll have to proceed and hope that he can come later.

We'll go to Mr. Oliphant.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

Thanks for your work. I'm quite aware of your work. I know that you are good advocates and also good supporters of those who are enduring these wait times.

I didn't get to ask this in the last round. I'm trying to understand, and you may be able to shed some light on this, the relationship between inventories--the people who are in the queue waiting--and actual targets for this year.

I notice that in Buffalo, for instance, in the inventory in October, 300 people were waiting under family class: parents and grandparents. Yet the target for this year is 415. There were 300 people in the queue in October, and the target for 2011 is 415, whereas in New Delhi there are 5,229 in the queue, and the target is half of that, less than half of that, at 2,300. In Beijing there are 3,767 in the queue, and the target this year is 2,500. In Singapore, 1,019 are in the queue, and 795 is the target.

It seems to me that you have a very good chance of getting in if you're applying in Buffalo, because the queue is actually shorter than the target. In Singapore, the numbers are almost equal. In Beijing, it's two-thirds, and in New Delhi, it's half. I don't see any relationship between the queues--the people who are actually applying--and the targets.

I'm wondering if you have some insight into how you think those targets are actually set, whether they have anything to do with the number of people who actually apply, and whether you're having to help people in different offices or shift them around to other offices.

[Qun Li]

Is this question for us?

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

It's a question for you.

Those inventory numbers don't seem to relate at all to the quotas that are going to come in next year. Is that your experience?

[Felix Zhang]

Yes, and also, we realize that the age of the inventory plays a part. For example, the inventory in Buffalo is from about six months, but the inventory in Beijing is from more than three years. So people in the queue at the Beijing office have been waiting for more than three years already.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

It's rather difficult for us to understand, because the wait times do relate to inventories. If the wait time is long, it usually shows you that the inventory is bigger than the quota.

Have people given you any advice as to why those numbers bear no resemblance to each other?

[Qun Li]

The quotas you mentioned are this year's quotas, but the quota for the year before was only 1,000. There was more inventory last year.

[Felix Zhang]

Basically, the inventory has accumulated in the last few years. If we look at the numbers from 2005 to 2009, at the Beijing office only 52% of the applications have been processed.

In New Delhi, 100% of the applications have been processed in the last five years. Applications are submitted, and at the same time CIC is processing the applications. The inventory flows. It's not consistent all the time.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

It's up and down. Thank you.

Do you have recommendations for this committee that we could make to Parliament that might help wait times? Is there anything you would suggest to us?

[Felix Zhang]

Yes. Actually, our members are talking about possible recommendations to Parliament to make wait times reasonable for elderly parents. One suggestion would be to bump the overall quotas for the parents and grandparents category. The other thing would be to set up—

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I'm sorry, could you repeat that for a second? I didn't quite get it.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

There's some sort of interference, sir. Could you repeat that for the committee? We didn't hear your recommendation.

[Felix Zhang]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

As usual, it's never dull here.

[Felix Zhang]

Our recommendation would be that parents whose children are all living in Canada should be on a priority list, because they don't have other children living with them back home. They need care the most.

There are other things. Parents are a lot closer to a child than are siblings or grandparents. So they should be on the priority list, rather than grandparents or other siblings, like brothers and sisters. So parents who don't have any dependent children should be on the priority list.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, sir.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

[Felix Zhang]

Thank you.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you.

It's interesting that someone from among the applicants has come to talk to us about wait times. It's been more than three years since I've sat on this committee and been concerned with immigration. I've acquired the conviction that immigration wait times, contrary to what they may be in other systems, are not the consequence of a lack of resources, but of a management method. It seems quite clear to me that the method that current and previous governments have used to control the number of immigrants is to impose more or less long waiting times. It was also indirectly demonstrated by Mr. Oliphant that we don't have regional quotas, officially, but that, in actual fact, we exercise de facto control over the number of immigrants coming from a particular place through the allocation of resources to various missions around the world.

In the case of the health system, the problem is simply that we don't have enough resources to process all the applications and that we're trying to do the best we can. It seems to me this should be different in immigration, particularly since people pay when they file an application; they cover its costs. This isn't a question of money; it's really a question of control. Consequently, some people are experiencing human dramas because they have to wait a number of years to bring in a family member or to file an application for immigration, a temporary visa and so on. The system is unable to meet their needs.

What must we do to solve this problem? In my view, if we want to process applications more quickly, that's an easy matter; we need only increase the resources. In any case, people pay to have their applications processed. Obviously, however, if we do that, we will completely exceed our immigration objectives in Canada. So what do we do? Should we increase the quotas and open the door wider in order to reduce wait times? Will we set much tighter conditions instead so that fewer people wind up in the waiting line and things go more quickly? Do we maintain the status quo and use the waiting period as a brake on the influx of immigrants to Canada?

[Felix Zhang]

It's a very difficult question for us to answer because we don't have a lot of data to support our suggestions—for example, how much money it will cost Canadians to sponsor these elderly parents. We don't have that data.

But our belief is that parents should be allowed to come in. As a program, it should be practical. And it should not let parents wait 10 or 15 years. Parents have passed away while waiting. That's not the Canadian value.