Thank you very much for having me.
Just as an introduction, my name is Elizabeth Long. I'm an immigration lawyer and am in my ninth year of practice, exclusively in immigration law and mostly with regard to paper applications, such as temporary resident visas. Over my years of practice I have processed hundreds of temporary resident visas for visitors, students, and workers from around the world.
One of the main issues I want to talk about today is the criteria used by visa officers. lt is extremely unclear, first of all, in the criteria what exactly they should be looking at. As a result, the way they apply the criteria and what they use to determine whether or not a person should be issued a temporary resident visa is often wrong.
For example, officers often look at whether or not someone has strong ties in Canada as a reason for rejection. There are people who have family members in Canada: for example, a widow who has a child in Canada and who will often not be able to get a visa because she has family in Canada whom she wants to visit; or people who are being sponsored but who can't come to Canada because their husbands or wives are in Canada.
You also have “temporary intent” being applied instead of dual intent, which is what the act actually states. Temporary intent occurs when an officer asks: are you going to want to stay in Canada permanently, or temporarily?
That is the wrong criterion. Subsection 22(2) of the act—and I apologize for reading it, but I feel this is important—reads:
An intention by a foreign national to become a permanent resident does not preclude them from becoming a temporary resident if the officer is satisfied that they will leave Canada by the end of the period authorized for their stay.
What that means is that the officer is not supposed to look at whether or not a person has temporary or permanent resident intent, but at whether or not they are likely to follow the laws of Canada and leave when they're supposed to. If the officers apply temporary intent, that often leads to a very wrong decision.
For example, students are encouraged to come to Canada and to settle. That's why we have the CEC program and that's why we have the post-grad work permit program: to encourage them to stay. But officers at the visa post, for example, look at whether the students have temporary or permanent intent.
Oftentimes, for example, students' families are not allowed to come to Canada to join them while they are studying because the officers want to leave some ties to the home country. I have seen examples of students having to leave their studies and go back home because their families can't join them and they can't leave their husbands and their children back home.
Oftentimes, there are couples who sometimes even have Canadian children who can't join their fathers, because their mothers can't join their husbands while they're waiting for the sponsorships to be issued and can't get the temporary resident visas to come to Canada.
Oftentimes there are workers who are coming to Canada to earn a better living, but they are rejected because they don't have enough assets back home.
What this results in is a system in disrepute. When people feel they are being unfairly judged and given unfair decisions, they come to your office and ask you to do something. Oftentimes your hands are tied and the court's hands are tied because the level of discretion that is given to officers is so high. How do you argue with officers that they are wrong, if they have so much power to determine what they want to do?
The consequences of this situation are severe. Families are unduly separated; there is economic harm when businesses aren't able to hire workers they need; universities are losing valuable students who are bright and will provide a contribution to Canada; and, as we heard from our previous speakers, tourism is also being affected.
The solution, I would suggest to you, is first that we need to have much clearer criteria for officers to follow. There should be a way, as Member Sims previously stated, for us to look at our Canadian citizens. If we want family members to join us, we might not know what the people are like overseas, but we know who the Canadians are. If we can see who your constituents are and judge by their integrity, then perhaps that's a way to determine whether or not this person is likely to obey the laws when they come to Canada.
I truly believe in an appeal system, because what you see in systems where there are abilities to appeal is that there is guidance afterwards to the officers of what is reasonable and what is unreasonable, and right now there is no such guidance.
In conclusion, this is a system that is just crying out for guidance, and I truly hope that today, when we're studying this, you will be able to provide us with some guidance.
Thank you.