Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 6th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning, everyone. This is meeting number 81 of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. It's June 6, 2013. We are studying temporary resident visas for visitors.

We have two witnesses before us today. First is the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. The director, who is appearing before us this morning, is Avvy Go. The second witness is the Chinese Canadian National Council. There are two representatives. One is the executive director, Mr. Victor Wong. Good morning to you, sir. The other is the national director, Alice Choy. Good morning to you.

You each will have up to 10 minutes to make a presentation to the committee. Then members of the committee, I expect, will have questions for you.

Ms. Go, you may proceed first. Thank you, and welcome to the committee.

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go, Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic]

Thank you, and good morning.

My name is Avvy Go, and I am the clinic director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic.

We are a community-based organization, non-profit, that provides free legal services to low-income families in the Toronto area, particularly those from the Chinese and Southeast Asian communities.

Last October we celebrated our 25th anniversary. Over that period we have served tens of thousands of clients, many of whom came to us for immigration issues. About one-third of our caseload is in the immigration area.

I would very much like to thank the committee for giving me and the organization the opportunity to talk about the temporary resident permits for visitors—or visitor visas for short—in my presentation.

In my submission, I'll try to address the three questions that were posed by the committee, namely: the integrity of the system; the costs and practical implications of introducing an appeal mechanism; and finally, comparing Canada's visitor visa program with programs in certain peer countries.

I'll start with the integrity of the system. According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, each year roughly 35 million people visit Canada. While the Canadian government currently does not have a system to keep track of visitors' exits, common sense would suggest that the vast majority of the 35 million visitors leave Canada at the end of their visit. Allowing visitors to come to Canada is absolutely essential to Canada's economic interest. This is made evident, for instance, by the efforts of our Prime Minister to lobby China to grant Canada approved destination status—a destination that makes it easier for Chinese nationals to visit Canada.

The visitor visa program is also crucial to the social and cultural development of our country, yet despite the government's effort to promote tourism and trade, many of our clients are unable to obtain visitor visas for their family members from overseas, even though for many the granting of a visitor visa is the only mechanism whereby they are able to see their family members. This is because many of our clients are either unable to return to their country of origin because of their refugee status or they are ineligible to sponsor family members to Canada as they do not meet the stringent sponsorship requirements.

Indeed, as more and more restrictions are being placed on family class sponsorship, fewer and fewer Canadians can bring their families to Canada. The LICO requirement, for instance, bars many low-income immigrants and refugees from sponsoring their families. The recently proposed regulatory amendments to the family class sponsorship, if passed, will make it even more difficult, if not impossible, for Canadians to be reunited with their families in Canada.

Under these circumstances, the visitor visa program may represent the only hope for some Canadians to see their families. Already people from the global south, including those from China, face greater hurdles in visiting Canada because of the visa requirement. If the door is closed even further, some Canadians may become permanently separated from their loved ones.

While we acknowledge that it is important to protect the integrity of the visitor visa program, the committee should also be cognizant of other objectives that are also being served and not let the interests of security overshadow other equally legitimate interests.

At the same time, I would respectfully submit that a system that is truly built on integrity must be one that promotes consistency and transparency in decision-making. A system has no integrity if the decision-makers involved are allowed to make subjective and arbitrary decisions in the absence of any accountability and oversight.

As it now stands, visa officers have wide discretion to decide whether to grant someone a visitor visa. Based on our experiences, visa officers often do not exercise their discretion in any consistent manner, and at times their decisions may be reflective of the officer's personal bias and prejudice.

For instance, despite legislative provisions and jurisprudence from the Federal Court stating otherwise, many visa officers still refuse to grant visitor visas on the basis of dual intention. This is so particularly if the applicant has a family member in Canada. So indeed, from what we can see, applicants who have family in Canada are less likely to get a visitor visa for their family members than those who don't.

The committee is rightly concerned about visitors who overstay their visa or use some other irregular means to come to Canada. In our respectful submission, however, tightening up the rules for visitor visas and for family class sponsorship will not necessarily add to the integrity of the system, and may in fact create the opposite effect.

If the government continues to put up roadblocks and hurdles to bar families from being united, people will still try to find some other ways of getting their families here. If, on the other hand, Canadians can be assured that they have a fair and reasonable chance to apply under the family sponsorship clause, they will then be less likely to use the visitor visa process as a back door to facilitate family reunification.

In short, the integrity of the visitor visa system must be balanced with the other core objectives of Canada's immigration policy, including the objective of family unification. Integrity can be best achieved if we have a system that is open and fair and that at the same time fosters objective and consistent decision-making.

I shall turn now to the second question, and that is the introduction of an appeal mechanism. Let me begin by asking each and every member of this committee to think how many times, as members of Parliament, you have received requests from your constituents asking for help to bring their family members to Canada as visitors to attend such events as funerals and weddings. How often do you wonder why the visa officer has refused a visa application in the first place?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

It's zillions of times.

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

Exactly.

When a visitor visa is refused, those applicants who have the wherewithal can hire lawyers and seek judicial review of the negative decision by the Federal Court. For the vast majority of the applicants, however, the court process is simply too costly and too complicated, and it takes too much time to complete.

That's why we would very much welcome an appeal process for a visitor visa that is easy to access and does not carry a high processing fee. While it may be cost-prohibitive to grant the right to appeal to all applicants, it would not be unreasonable, in my view, to grant the right to appeal to those applicants who are coming here to visit family members. To be meaningful, however, the appeal must be determined by an independent body, such as the Immigration and Refugee board or something like it, and it must be heard in a timely fashion.

Finally, on the last question, as I'm not an expert on the systems in other countries, I did a search recently on the U.K., U.S.A., Australian, and New Zealand systems. They are all over the place, although some countries have a review system for refused visitor visa applications. In any event, I would submit that we should only borrow from these other countries if their policies are consistent with Canadian principles and values concerning immigration policy, including the principle of family reunification.

In conclusion, I would respectfully submit that if Canada wants to continue to project an image as an open and welcoming country, then our visitor visa policy should also be open and fair to all people, so that regardless of their background, country of origin, or income level they will have an equal chance of coming to visit Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Go.

Again, let me offer you congratulations on 25 years of giving legal advice to your community.

Mr. Wong, I assume you're the spokesperson. You have up to ten minutes, sir.

[Victor Wong, Executive Director, Chinese Canadian National Council]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be sharing my time with my colleague, Ms. Alice Choy, who is our national director.

Good morning, everyone, honourable members. I'm Victor Wong. I'm the executive director of the Chinese Canadian National Council. With me is Ms. Alice Choy, our national director. She is also the president of the Association for Business and Community Development, based in Montreal. She was a member of the Canadian delegation that visited China with the Prime Minister on his first bilateral visit in 2009. That's where the ADS agreement was signed.

Founded in 1980, CCNC is a national non-profit organization with 27 chapters across Canada, and we are a community leader for Chinese Canadians in promoting a more just, respectful, and inclusive society. The Chinese Canadian community has a unique immigration history. It's one of restriction, exclusion, and quotas, and from this experience we can offer the following observations with regard to the visitor visas study that you're conducting.

Canada offers visa-free travel for visitors from certain countries already. Taiwan passport holders and Hong Kong residents are examples, but visitors from China are required to apply for a temporary resident visa, and vice versa. The fact is that emerging countries tend to be on Canada's visa list, which tends to racialize some of the public discourse around this issue.

We don't hear about visitor overstays from Americans, or the British, for example, but if there is some controversial story about visitor visas, it's about someone who has overstayed their visa. The visa requirement allows Canada to manage the flow of visitors, but it also comes at a cost to Canadian families and Canadian businesses.

I'll just touch briefly on a few things that we've come across. With regard to tourist visas, according to the UN World Tourism Organization, 83 million Chinese tourists spent a record $102 billion in international tourism in 2012. Their preferred countries included places in their region—Hong Kong and Macau, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, and Australia—but about 7 million Chinese tourists travelled longer destinations, mainly to the U.S., France, the U.K., and other European countries.

Canada has worked hard to attract more of these tourists. As I mentioned earlier, we signed the ADS, and about 300,000 Chinese tourists visited Canada in 2012, but I think we're falling behind. We will have to be much more competitive, in my view, and the visa process is one important piece.

As for visas for family and friends, China remains a top source country for immigration to Canada. About 300,000 Chinese have arrived in the last decade. Like the previous generations of naturalized Canadians, these newcomers will want to have their friends and relatives living overseas to visit for their shared holidays, for weddings, births, or sometimes there's an illness in the family, or perhaps a funeral. Too often, as mentioned by my colleague, Ms. Go, visa applications are rejected and visitors need to make a new application, or they require intervention from honourable members, or even from the minister's office.

I just want to touch briefly on the super visa for parents and grandparents. When it was introduced, CCNC supported it as a stopgap measure in response to the backlog of applications. The rejection rate, though, is high, and the program should have, but doesn't, a proper mechanism to land those who wish to stay here on a permanent basis.

What you're going to see in about ten years is perhaps hundreds of non-status grannies seeking status. What are you going to do at that time?

As for business visitors, individuals are visiting for various business and investment reasons. They want to do their research. Some of them also want to research choices for immigration and for international education opportunities for their family members.

Chinese tend to form delegations for study and travel, but it's a very cumbersome process when it comes to the visa, because they have to prepare the visas in batches and they have to put together invitation letters. Some honourable members here may have been approached to offer invitation letters to some of these delegations. The rejection rate is high. And as for an appeal mechanism, a speedy appeal mechanism might work, but it's better to just get the decision right in the first place. We recognize that there are trafficking issues, but it appears also to be much easier to secure visas to visit other developed countries, like Singapore or Australia, Japan, the U.S.A. If there is an issue with trafficking, perhaps we could look at conducting in-person interviews, where warranted. That might be one way to discourage trafficking.

The bottom line is, we're not competitive; we're losing opportunities for Canadian families and businesses. We would like to see a holistic approach here.

I want to end my comments now—I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Choy—by posing a question to MPs in this review. My question is, do Canadians want to see more Chinese visitors? From my vantage point, I'm just seeing mixed signals with regard to that question.

I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Choy, who has some information from her interviews with some of the folks in Hong Kong, China, and Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Wong.

Ms. Choy, you have three minutes.

[Alice Choy, National Director, Chinese Canadian National Council]

Thank you, everyone. Good morning.

My name is Alice Choy. I'm also the president of the Association for Business and Community Development in Montreal. We have never gotten funding from the government, even though we work very hard on the different issues, especially helping new immigrants. I've been serving the community for 20 years.

I heard from many people. I just came back from Hong Kong and China last month. I talked to different travel agents when I was in Hong Kong and China, and also when I came back to Canada. We found out there is a problem; Canada's tourism business is not that attractive to the mainland China tourist, and it is highly competitive with the U.S. This is very important to bring revenue to Canada. The reason is a high rejection rate of the visa. Of course, there are many different individual cases for rejection. The main reason is that they find they have an intention to stay in Canada. Those are very big voices, those people who talked to me and made the complaint.

These are very individual cases, and they complain, “How can you judge me and say I have an intention to come to Canada and not leave?” They say they make good money, they have properties, they are professional. Canada, after the eight years, is just one stop, one country they want to visit.

Actually, the Canadian tourist board works very hard and invests lots of money to provide tourism in Canada. While I'm always travelling between Hong Kong and China, most of the time I talk to people and I'm promoting Canada's business in different fields, such as education, tourism, and business. The people I talk to want to come to Canada to take a look, and they form delegations, but unfortunately many of them are rejected.

Recently I talked to some travel agents in Canada, and they said there is also a high rejection rate. Let's say last month they had a delegation for 30 people, but only five got the visa.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Perhaps you could wind up, Ms. Choy, if you could, please.

[Alice Choy]

To be fair to our country, our policy gives us prestige. Some people also reflected to me that they don't want to be too open. So we need to find a solution and a balance for how to increase the visas but not be too open or too easy. Some local people were also concerned.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Leung.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to the witnesses for appearing today.

I wish to address the issue of program integrity. We heard from our own officials that Canada has one of the highest acceptance rates. For example, in the super visa area we have almost 80% acceptance. Also, based on my own business experience of about 25 years between businesses here and in China, I generally have not had a problem with people I need to bring into Canada. So I differ with you on your assessment of Canada being a hard place to get into, because there are equal difficulties going into other countries—the United States, Australia, and European countries.

Given that we are discussing program integrity, I wish to hear from you on what other methods you suggest to safeguard our Canadian visitor immigration system—other than the standard application, the invitation letter, documentation of the ability or intent to do business here, and property ownership. When you think about 35 million visitors coming into Canada, that is doubling our population in a year. Even if less than 1% of those chose not to leave the country, it would be a tremendous problem for us. So I would like to hear from you on what other measures you suggest to maintain and protect our borders and the integrity of the program system.

Ms. Go?

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

To address your question about the super visa, in my experience many of the people simply do not apply because they don't think they're going to be eligible. Apart from needing to meet the income requirement, you also need to have a lot of cash in order to apply. I think a lot of people simply cannot be bothered. You have a very self-selective process, whereby you tend to get a higher acceptance rate.

On the integrity issue, apart from having to assess the integrity, it is one of the many objectives in promoting visitors, promoting trade, promoting business, and allowing families to visit each other, so let's keep those in mind. But even just focused on the integrity issue...I talked about the consistency in decision-making, which is an important aspect. Victor suggested an interview process, which is also a good mechanism. But how do you change the mindset of some of the visa officers? That is an ongoing challenge, and it's not just about visitor visas in general. Some visa officers have this view that people from certain countries would come and not leave. I'm sure many of you have the experience of dealing with families—I have a number of those cases myself. Someone is ill or has passed away and a relative needs to bring a family member here to attend a funeral or whatnot. The family member has their own family overseas, has a job overseas, has a house overseas, and is still being seen as someone who's not going to leave. I'm not sure what other documents you can require from that person to change the officer's mind. So I think it's really about changing the mindset of the officer, and if we can't change the mindest, then we'd better have a different system in place.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Victor?

[Victor Wong]

I agree with my colleague. You mentioned 35 million tourists, but many of them do not require a visa. Of the 35 million, perhaps 11 million are Americans, and I don't know how many really require a visa.

With regard to the super visa, there is 80% acceptance, but that means 20% rejection, which seems very high to me for families trying to get their parents and grandparents here on a temporary basis. It seems like a high figure. Perhaps I could suggest to your department to look at the numbers of reapplication when people are rejected. If they reapply, what is the acceptance rate there? Perhaps that could inform the department of where some improvements could be made to make the system more efficient.

I suggested an interview process, and that's what they do in the States. They do a lot of in-person interviews. It's costly, but perhaps you could pilot it just for those cases where you are rejecting applicants. Before you reject them you would have an in-person interview, and perhaps that might help to get some approvals for people right off the bat whom you would otherwise be inclined to reject.

I want to re-emphasize that if you're going to do an appeal, it has to be speedy. If somebody's applying to come over for a wedding, or because some family member is ill, they need the approval right away. We can't have a long process for appeals.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

There really isn't an additional tool we can have, but there is perhaps one that has been discussed, which I've experienced in some countries. What do you think of requesting some sort of bond, a financial bond, if you want to get away from the appeal system and the longer processing time? What do you think?

[Victor Wong]

On asking for bonds, some travel on the ADS, and they do require some deposit to maintain—

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Is that in place right now? I don't think so.

[Victor Wong]

In China, yes. It's on the Chinese side.

[Alice Choy]

It's on the Chinese side—

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

But it has nothing to do with us.

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

May I answer? I think if you ask for bonds it means that only people who have the cash up front will be able to come and visit again.

Of course, you can do a number of things to make the system harder for people to get in, but my question is, at what cost, and who are you excluding? I would certainly hope that we don't end up with a system that makes it so hard that only the super-rich and the super-connected people and those who have all the connections with MPs and high-paid lawyers will be able to come here.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Sims.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank our witnesses for taking the time to come and talk to us about this important subject. I don't think there is an MP who hasn't heard those heart-rending stories in their offices. I haven't met one yet. For me, I usually say that in my riding my MP's office often feels like the local hospital's emergency room, where we're doing triage most of the time. Really, that's the image.

I come from the riding of Newton—North Delta, which has the largest Sikh population. You might also know that Chandigarh, the outpost in the Punjab, also has an almost 50% rejection rate, so you can imagine the kind of traffic we see.

In hearing your stories around family reunification and families just wanting to see each other for short periods of time, it always hits me as bizarre that my family members who live in England can just get on a plane and be here, while people who have family members who are living in India, China, or the Philippines have to go through such major hurdles.

Right now, people are looking for a way to address this. You've mentioned one of those ways, and that's the appeal service, but I think you've also mentioned the devastation that occurs in families. We're getting rejections for funerals, for visiting dying parents, or siblings, or even friends in some cases, and for weddings, births...you name it. As you know, in our extended families, this is so very important for emotional health, and for physical health as well. I think we're all attuned to that.

There's a question I'm often asked by the intended sponsors, because of course we get the sob stories from all the people who get rejected. There's a continuous line. What they often ask about is what they can do to get their sister, their brother, or whoever over here. It always breaks your heart, because they then make comments like “This doesn't feel like my home.” They say, “When I can't invite my sister to an important event that's happening in my life, Canada, where I've lived for 25 years, no longer feels like my home.” It sometimes actually brings me close to tears when I hear these stories.

This brings me to my very first question. Do you think there is value in having the visa officer look not only at the application of the person who is coming? I'm specifically talking about those with families.

Alice, I was really, really struck.... I think it was you, Victor, who said that sometimes having family here is a detriment or a barrier to getting a visa. You see, I've read those reasons—“too much family”—and I think that is such a bizarre thing to write.

So when we're looking at this, if the visa officer also looks at the sponsor's profile, their financial status, their encounters with the legal system, and their employment history, to establish that person's credibility, the credibility of the person who is sponsoring them, what are your thoughts on that idea? Also, how could we ensure that a person leaves?

I'll leave it to you, Avvy, and then I'll go over to Alice.

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

I was the one who made that comment about the family being a detriment.