Okay, I will slow down. I apologize.
As someone who's experienced first-hand family separation due to immigration reasons, I wholeheartedly sympathize with families who are waiting for over seven years to have their application processed in order to be reunified with their loved ones. We know there are many arguments towards family reunification. Parents and grandparents contribute to our well-being as a community and nation. With more adults working, the household income could be enhanced. Family reunification gives a boost to economic consumption as larger families inevitably consume more goods and services. Our recommendation towards this end is to reduce waiting times for parents and grandparents and consider a pilot project to pre-approve applications that include the extended family.
I would like to commence by expressing our support for the recent announcement regarding the increase in the number of sponsored parents and grandparents that Canada will admit next year. We see this as a real step towards positive change. The target numbers for parents and grandparents have steadily fallen from 20,000 in 2006 to 15,000 in 2010. Increasing the targets to 25,000 in 2012 will make a decided impact on the number of families who will finally be reunited.
While measures have been taken to increase the number of sponsored parents and grandparents, more can be done for immigrants in other categories. It's no secret that Canada's population increase will soon be driven by net immigration. We need to ensure that we're replacing our aging workforce, as well as meeting our vision in terms of expanding our resources and knowledge sectors. Currently, we receive an average of 250,000 immigrants every year: 232,868 in 2007; 271,028 in 2008; 258,853 in 2009; and 244,401 in 2010. These applications were processed under the existing system. Looking at these numbers, it becomes clear that we cannot reduce the backlog unless we increase the annual immigration target range. Our recommendation, unlike the speakers who came before us, is to increase the annual immigration target range from the present 240,000 to 265,000 to 320,000 to 340,000, which is around 1% of the Canadian population, to address the backlog.
Unfortunately, the good news in the recent announcement about increasing the target number of sponsored parents and grandparents was accompanied by troubling measures that will surely negatively impact Canadian families. The recent proposal from the federal government included a stipulation to put in place a pause of up to 24 months on the acceptance of new sponsorship applications for parents and grandparents effective November 5, 2011. We feel that preventing families from submitting applications is inhumane. Every family should be provided a chance to submit an application for reunification. We believe that the solution for eliminating the 165,000-strong backlog of parent and grandparent applications is to hire more people to review the applications and not simply refuse to look at applications.
I can't imagine what it would feel like to be told that my family would not be even extended the opportunity to submit an application regardless of the merits of our case. Our recommendation is to eliminate the temporary pause of up to 24 months on the acceptance of new sponsorship applications for parents and grandparents. Our second recommendation in this regard is to gear the budget allocation to Citizenship and Immigration Canada towards strengthening the capacity within the department to effectively eliminate the backlog in processing family reunifications requests and permanent residence applications.
The federal government also recently announced the new parent and grandparent super visa, which will be valid for up to 10 years. The multiple-entry visa is designed to allow an applicant to remain in Canada for up to 24 months at a time without the need for renewal of their status. The visa, which comes into effect on December 1, 2011, promises to be issued within eight weeks of application. Applicants will be required to obtain private Canadian healthcare insurance for their stay in Canada.
While on the surface this measure seems to be a move towards eliminating our immigration backlog, upon closer examination it becomes clear that this is a temporary solution at best, which can only work as a band-aid, rather than a cure for our ailments. Multiple-entry visas have already been part of our system. In fact, we have had the five-year multiple-entry visa in place for a number of years, and it has yet to make an impact on our immigration backlog.
In reality, families accessing visitor visas have been subjected to extremely high rejection rates. A visitor visa is ultimately an inadequate substitute for permanent residency status particularly if it's not accompanied by a mechanism that will allow applicants to land as permanent immigrants after a number of years of residency in Canada.
Ultimately, much more work needs to be done in fine-tuning the parent and grandparent super visa before it can be posited as a real solution. We welcome the opportunity to work with the government on addressing the shortcomings of this initiative in the near future in order to meet the needs of all stakeholders. Our recommendation in this regard is to review the parent and grandparent super visa in order to build the mechanisms for permanent residency after a number of years of residency in Canada.
We also believe that we should look at how we can utilize existing programs to meet the needs of Canadian families. One such measure would be to expand the Canadian economic class to allow long-term residents and temporary workers to land. For years we have expressed our concern about the policy shift of the Ministry of Immigration whereby immigrants are increasingly being understood and treated as cheap and exploitable labour to be brought here through temporary visas.
This government has brought in numerous changes to allow more flexibility to visa offices to bring in skilled workers to meet labour needs. Employers claim labour shortages of both high-skilled and low-skilled workers, with much of this perceived labour shortage occurring in the lower-skilled sectors.
Under the existing point system, low-skilled workers will never have enough points to stay in Canada as permanent residents and never qualify as citizens or be able to bring their families to Canada.