Thank you.
I'm Julie Taub. I'm an immigration and refugee lawyer in Ottawa and a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board. I've been practising exclusively in the area of immigration since my appointment to the board, which would have been 1996. I'm a sole practitioner.
My presentation is from a very different angle, because I believe that whatever criteria are in place to issue temporary resident visas, be they for students or visitors or foreign workers, they should be exclusively for the best interests of Canada. These are not refugees we're dealing with.
And yes, I do believe that immigration officers, visa officers, should have the discretion, and they should be allowed to exercise discretion. Of course there's profiling. There's no choice but to have country profiling, because we cannot deny that there are dozens of, to give an example, terrorist-producing countries.
And yes, if you have a single male who's not married and who's young, it goes without saying that 19 out of 20 would be denied; I would have thought it would be 20 out of 20. It's based simply on experience.
But enough said about that. Currently, if I counted this right, there are about 154 countries where they require visitor visas. There are reasons for requiring visas for all of these countries. The Americans, for example, have more control on the exits of visitors.
Visitors come into this country, foreign workers come into this country, international students come into this country, and there's absolutely no monitoring. There is no follow-up. Nobody knows what really happens. Does the foreign worker go to the company where he's supposed to work? Does the international student stay in the school? Nobody knows, because there's no monitoring of compliance.
Universities and colleges are not required to report if the student has shown up or if the student has dropped out. Employers have no obligation to report to Immigration on whether the workers have shown up, whether they have quit their job, or whether they have been fired. There is no monitoring.
In the United States, if you get a visitor visa, you also get an I-94, a white paper that you must submit upon exiting the country. The airline companies are supposed to pick that up. So there is some kind of control when you exit the country.
The visa-waiver countries and visa-exempt countries receive a white paper, which you typically hand in when you exit the United States. It's not a perfect system, because the onus is on the airline companies to request the I-94. If you don't submit it, then the foreign national may have serious consequences with the United States.
However, we're here to discuss our system. An easy solution would be to have a biometric smart card visa: swipe upon entry, swipe upon exit. Then you wouldn't have to worry about where these 41,000 people that the Auditor General mentioned have disappeared to in Canada. It's very easy: you monitor entry, you monitor exit. It could apply across the whole spectrum of temporary residents, from students to workers to visitors.
I mean, the Ottawa Athletic Club and all sports clubs have had smart cards for about four decades. It's not really a high-tech solution.
Frankly, it's easier to get into Canada than it is into the Ottawa Athletic Club. That's no joke. You need a smart card. You have a smart card membership.
As well, they should require that their passports be stamped upon entry into Canada and exit-stamped when they leave Canada. Then you don't have to worry about lack of compliance and violations of overstaying or not complying with immigration regulations. That's why the requirements for issuing visas are so stringent now, because there are so many violations.
I'm quite certain that Immigration has no idea of the statistics, of the number of violations for visitors who have overstayed, students and foreign workers, because they don't know when or if they leave. They know there is a problem.
Everybody who's travelling has to go through security. When you go through security, at the other end there should be a CBSA officer who swipes your visitor, foreign worker, or student visa when you're leaving. When you come back, it's the same thing. It would not be onerous for the temporary resident visa holder because they need a passport to travel, regardless. You cannot travel internationally without a passport. You could have a smart card visa biometric in your passport. You swipe when you leave, swipe when you enter. I am pretty certain that the restrictive criteria for issuing visas would be relaxed somewhat if Immigration had more control over what happens after you enter Canada.
Exit and entry stamps should also apply to permanent residents. We have this very expensive and ineffective Immigration Appeal Division, with an enormous backlog, to deal with cases of lack of compliance with PR obligations. That could be eliminated completely with a smart card permanent resident card—swipe when you leave, swipe when you enter.