The big leap we're making here today is from two years to five years. What we're trying to do is move forward on a piece of legislation. We're looking for something very specific so that if the misrepresentation was unintentional, the person wouldn't be impacted in the same way.
By the way, when we talk about a move from two to five years, think about what we're really saying to families and how long they're going to be separated. It's not only the five years that they can't reapply, but also the five years after that that they can't apply, and so on, and all the processing time as well.
I want to give you an example and get your input. This is a real case, but I'm not going to mention any names. A person applied to come over here and listed all the places he had worked but forgot to mention a place where he had worked for four months when he was 17. This was discovered, or whatever, and that person was told that he had misrepresented himself because he had not listed all his places of employment.
I dealt with that case. I looked at it and made all the phone calls, as you're supposed to, to get some more background. Even after I got the background information, that was the only sticking point I could find. Then I sat down and decided to see if I, at my ripe old age, could write down all the things I have done since I was 16. I wrote them down. I have a fairly good memory, but then I realized that for two weeks, for two whole weeks, I had a job at a hospital which I had to quit because I was going away. I had totally forgotten about that. I had to be reminded by my husband who happened to find it interesting that I forgot those two weeks of my life. He remembered for some weird reason, and I don't know why. If I were filling out that form, I would have forgotten to include that. It would be a totally innocent omission, not meaning to misrepresent.
That's one scenario.
Then there are these other scenarios, and they are real scenarios as well, involving women who are running away to safety from very dangerous situations, not only politically dangerous situations but also dangerous domestic situations. When they're filling out a form, they may not want to acknowledge that they have a husband because they have this inherent fear that he's going to track them down.
What we're saying in both those cases is that they lied. One was unintentional, a memory lapse; let's call it a senior moment. The second one was a situation we can understand. To me, this piece of legislation goes way over the top.
I also heard that Australia has a period of only three years, right? We didn't look at moving the five years down, though we didn't like the five years, because as long as we can get this exception, then we felt we could make this work. I'm still hopeful, forever hopeful on this side, Mr. Dykstra, that you will see reason and vote with us.