Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 6th, 2016

[Huda Bukhari]

They have the maturity, but do they have the financial resources within our community? They do not. We are seeing Syrian children right now taking care of and acting on behalf of their parents. They have been hardened. The Middle East is going through, and has gone through, such turmoil that these children have grown up.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I'm sure they have.

If the average 18-year-old doesn't have the financial resources, what's an appropriate age?

[Huda Bukhari]

We do not want dependency either. If someone is able to work and is then able to take care of their parents and grandparents or someone who is unwell, if the 18-year-old can meet that minimum financial requirement, that's fine.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

A sponsor must show that he or she has the income to support the sponsored family member. This proof can only come in the form of tax returns or documentation from the Canada Revenue Agency.

Has this caused problems for the people you see?

[Huda Bukhari]

It has only caused problems for those who haven't been in Canada for three years. Clients who have come in the last two years need to produce three years' worth of tax returns.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Mr. Saroya.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Wang, you mentioned the financial burden is too high to sponsor somebody for the family class. You said it previously was less. What is the amount today compared to the previous government?

[Zaixin Ma, Interpretation]

The Liberal government before the last Conservative government only wanted one year's proof of income. After the Conservative government came to power, it was three years. Now with the Liberal government, it's still three years. Our recommendation would be that we go back to just this one year of proof of income.

The sponsor would also like to see the wait requirement lowered, because it is difficult for new immigrants to find a job. They come from a different cultural and language background. It is very difficult for them to find higher paying jobs in large companies. Usually they find jobs in smaller companies with an hourly wage of $15. Their annual income is only $30,000 to $40,000.

Right now the requirement is $50,000 to $60,000, so they both need to work. If one person needs to stay home to take care the child, then they wouldn't be able to satisfy the financial requirements and thus wouldn't be able to sponsor the parents or grandparents.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 30 seconds.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Both of you said that the age of 19 is too low. In 20 seconds, what age are you recommending for the family class?

[Huda Bukhari]

I recommend 24.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Ma.

[Zaixin Ma, Interpretation]

Our Chinese culture is different from the Middle Eastern situation. Our parents are older, in their 20s, maybe 24.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you to the witnesses on the panel for appearing at this committee hearing.

We will now suspend.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

The committee is resuming.

I'd like to welcome the witnesses on our second panel today. We have, as an individual, Usha George, the interim vice-president, research and innovation, at Ryerson University, by video conference. From the Centre for Newcomers, we have Anila Lee Yuen, the chief executive officer, by video conference from Calgary; as well as Admasu Tachble, director, settlement and career development. As an individual, we also have Madine VanderPlaat, professor at Saint Mary's University, from Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Welcome. You have seven minutes, please, and we will begin with the Centre for Newcomers, Ms. Anila Yuen.

[Anila Lee Yuen, Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Newcomers]

Good afternoon. My name is Anila Lee Yuen. I am the chief executive officer of the Centre for Newcomers, and with me here today Dr. Admasu Tachble, our director of settlement and career services.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak before you. The Centre for Newcomers is a settlement agency located here in Calgary, Alberta. We see about 10,000 immigrants and refugees every year for all of our settlement programs. Refugees make up about 20% of that number.

In regard to today's topic of family reunification, we've been hearing a lot of positive feedback as to the direction that the present government is taking. This policy is manifested in the increased quota that IRCC is giving to immigrants coming under the family class. While, overall, our position at the Centre for Newcomers is that the immigration policies in Canada are generally supportive of newcomers and complementary to our Canadian diaspora, there are some challenges remaining.

Today the main challenge I'd like to focus on is the ease of reunification with parents and with grandparents. We would really like to see the government continue to review the parents and grandparents sponsorship immigration policy and make it easier for children and grandchildren to sponsor their relatives to come to Canada.

The parent and grandparent sponsorship application window is quite short. What we hear is that, as soon as the quota is reached, the remaining applications are rejected. To add to this, from what our clients are telling us, the processing time is anywhere between three to five years in length, which is really quite an excessive amount of time in terms of wanting to have your family unified.

Those who are denied the ability to bring their parents over are, in our opinion, also denied their basic quality of life indicators, including family support and the ability to look for employment effectively. This is because they don't have the adequate child care that the grandparents would provide, and the child care that is available is often too costly. We know in Alberta that the cost of child care is quite steep, and it's very difficult for families to be able to find cost-effective child care. Not having the grandparents there to be able to participate in that aspect really puts a financial burden on the family, as well.

It also increases the family's financial burden because the entire family isn't in one location. We find that our new immigrant couples are not only taking care of their Canadian children here, but they're also needing to send money to support their parents.

We want to talk a little about the super visa program, as well. We don't believe it's a sustainable alternative to the direct sponsorship and immigration of parents and grandparents because, currently, many families are financially and emotionally burdened by this program. When we talk about the finances associated with the super visa, we're talking about the number of flights that have to be booked so that grandparents and parents can come and go. We're also talking about the high cost of health care in terms of having insurance readily available.

The other piece is that, because those grandparents don't have the ability to work, once their grandchildren are of school age and can go to school, there is a loss of family income that potentially the grandparents could be filling by being able to legally work in Canada. Emotionally, it's quite disruptive on the family unit and on the well-being of the grandchildren that they're primarily here to support. Children get attached to their grandparents. It helps them thrive; it helps them grow. It can be really traumatic for those Canadian children to have their grandparents needing to leave and then come back or not being allowed to stay after the visa expires.

The children are nurtured and cared for by the grandparents, and this builds a strong bond between the children and the grandparents, hence facilitating the positive identity-building of those children. The grandparents gain satisfaction as contributing members of the family unit. They contribute towards narrowing the generation gap and instilling some of the identity-based cultural values that are important to family cohesion and the family unit. This allows the newcomer couple to build their social capital in their own home.

I can speak from personal experience. In fact, today would be my grandmother's 106th birthday were she still alive. She lived with my family throughout the entirety of my childhood. I'm convinced that every accomplishment that I have made comes from the nurture, the care, and the bond that she created with me, and with my brother as well. It allowed both of my parents to work and it allowed my brother and I to have safety, care, and upbringing in our own home.

I'm really grateful for that opportunity and I hope every other Canadian born to immigrant parents also has the opportunity for that enriching, confidence-building experience.

Lastly, we really wanted to talk about grandparents who are here on super visas. They can't access the services and supports that they need for the well-being of the family and for their own improved quality of life. As sponsored immigrants, they would have access to all the settlement services and agencies, like us at the Centre for Newcomers, where they would be able to get English classes, settlement counselling, and employment counselling free of charge. As their grandchildren get older and are enrolled in school, they would be able to work and also to participate more fully in other aspects of Canadian society, thus decreasing social isolation and increasing the Canadian diaspora and all of the wonderful things that come with that.

For all of the aforementioned reasons, through discussion with our own clients and the support services we provide them, it is our stance at the Centre for Newcomers that sponsorship of parents and grandparents as immigrants should be more easily attainable in a timely manner. We should discontinue the super visa and instead allow them to become permanent residents and stay here.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Ms. George, you have seven minutes, please.

[Usha George, Interim Vice-President, Research and Innovation, Ryerson University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for this opportunity. I am delighted to be here. For over 24 years, ever since I came to Canada, my work has been with the newcomers and immigrants to Canada, three years as a community worker and for the rest of it, as an academic at the University of Toronto and now at Ryerson University.

Much of what we do is, of course, looking at various aspects of the immigration policy and how it's implemented. My presentation today touches on three major points. One is about refugees; another is about people who have applied for family reunification under the live-in caregiver program; and the third one is about family reunification for parents and grandparents.

I would like to remind everyone of the objective of our immigration policy, which is to support self-sufficiency and social and economic well-being of refugees by facilitating reunification with their family members in Canada. This is for refugees. On the whole, we say that we see that the families are united in Canada.

My submission is that two of the three goals that we have stated in our immigration policy are not being satisfied by the current family reunification policy. These are the social and the humanitarian pieces.

Let me start with the humanitarian piece around refugees. As has been said before, refugees come to Canada from war-torn countries and have traumatic pre-migration experiences. There's very little social capital available to them, so the initial phase involves them looking for anything that they can have in order to settle in Canada. The lack of family around them actually disrupts and delays their own settlement and integration, and as a result, they experience alienation and marginalization as well.

More and more, we are aware of what is called the feminization of migration. Many of the refugees who are coming to Canada now are single women with children. For example, we recently sponsored a family from Syria. The family arrived about three days ago, and it's a single mother with two children. Especially for women who are coming on their own without much social capital, we find that it is becoming very difficult for them.

On the whole, there are enough statistics to show that the processing times are very long and people have to wait patiently. I'm not even getting into the details of the bureaucratic and process-related issues, for example, the DNA testing and the excluded family category, and whether the sponsor is receiving social assistance. All of that aside, just the process itself taking so long actually puts a heavy emotional toll on the refugees.

My second example and argument is about Canada's caregiver program. We know that in the past, live-in caregivers had to live with a sponsoring family for two years, and after that, they would get their open work permit.

I just wanted to give you one story that I came across recently, and I've changed the person's name. This is a person I know very well. Mary came to Canada as a live-in caregiver in November 2009. In 2012, she received an open work permit. She applied for PR in March 2012. It has been four and a half years and she is still waiting for a response from the immigration department. When she came to Canada in 2009, her children were four years and two and a half years old. Now they are over eleven years and nine years old respectively. She has not seen her children in the last seven years.

Mary is just one of the many who are caught in the system in Canada, and there are very many, I understand from Mary herself. They actually even have a support group to talk to each other about their own experiences.

We know that this kind of delayed processing has affected the well-being of the children who are coming to join their mothers at any point in time whether after five years or six years.

The phenomenon of “barrel children” is well known to us, especially from the time when the Jamaican live-in caregiver program was quite alive. The term “barrel” refers to children who receive blue plastic barrels of things—goods and clothes, all of that—from their mothers in Canada, with the hope that their reunification will happen very fast. Studies have shown that, even when reunification happens, there are a great many issues around their emotional well-being and social adjustment, school adjustment and performance, and so on.

There have been a number of studies about the Filipino community, especially the children who have joined mothers in the live-in caregiver program. I don't know if it was Madine, but someone did a study on the Filipino children, and one of the findings was that a quarter of Filipino girls and more than a third of Filipino boys entering grade 8 in the late nineties had not graduated by 2003. The average age of separation is from five to six years old, and by the time the kids get back with the mothers, if at all, they are 13 or 14.

I was also reading about many of these children becoming members of gangs, simply because they don't perform well in school and they feel isolated. Then there are many examples of Filipino children underachieving in our school system, simply because of the separation and the anxiety, and the lack of support they feel, particularly emotionally. Of course, they were getting—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Ms. George, you have 20 seconds, please.

[Usha George]

Right.

The other issue is the grandparents and parents super visa. It's almost as if they are caught in a system. If they don't have enough income, they can't sponsor their parents. But the parents actually help to look after the children, which enables both the parents to go to work, so they are caught in that system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. George.

Ms. VanderPlaat, you have seven minutes, please.

[Dr. Madine VanderPlaat, Professor, Saint Mary's University, As an Individual]

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address your committee.

I'm here specifically to speak to the value of sponsoring immigrant parents and grandparents. In particular, I hope to provide you with a more robust theoretical and methodological context for your future deliberations.

The sponsorship of parents and grandparents has long been a highly contentious issue in competing views surrounding Canada's immigration strategy. Much if not all of the debate is grounded in discourse or narrative and not based on any empirical evidence. In very simplistic terms, the discussion on the value of sponsoring parents and grandparents takes place between those who advocate a humanitarian rationale for family reunification versus those who argue against such policies from an economic perspective.

The position opposing large-scale family reunification policies is based on an economic imperative that contends that while families may be good for the well-being of individuals, family class immigration may not be in the best economic interests of the state. In particular, sponsored parents and grandparents are viewed as potential burdens on Canadian society by virtue of their perceived diminished capacity for economic contribution and increased potential for stressing the social welfare and health care systems.

The humanitarian position, by contrast, derives its moral imperative from Canada's commitment to a number of international conventions that recognize the migrant's right to join or be joined by their family. The humanitarian position often also argues that not only is access to family a right, it's also fundamental for the social, physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being of newcomer populations.

In its current state, much of the debate between the more altruistic humanitarian position and the instrumental economic perspective is not particularly useful, because it lacks a common ground for argumentation. A more fruitful platform for discussion is presented by those who argue that the notions of contribution and burden are inappropriately defined by the dominant economic and human capital constructions of integration.

Researchers from this perspective argue that not only is the family good for the well-being of the individual, it is good for society as a whole because access to family relationships and networks can support and mitigate the settlement and integration experience. For example, by providing child care and/or labour to family-owned businesses, sponsored parents and grandparents can contribute to the overall economic well-being of the family and support the educational pursuits and labour market activities of other family members. Through volunteerism, informal networking, and kinship work, sponsored parents and grandparents can also contribute to community cohesion and social capital formation. In addition, the possibility of sponsoring relatives may be an important element in attracting and retaining immigrants, something that's very important for my corner of the country.

The problem with the alternative contribution discourse is that what “may” or “could” happen is more or less based on speculation rather than concrete evidence. Little attention has been given to developing models to ascertain the non-economic contributions made by these newcomers to Canada, or to develop more appropriate models for measuring the non-standard economic contributions of this particular class. Yet the need to understand the contributions that different families bring to the immigration experience is considered critical.

My research—with my colleagues Howard Ramos and Yoko Yoshida from Dalhousie University—constitutes a very preliminary effort to take a closer look at the role of sponsored parents and grandparents in this regard. Using the longitudinal survey of immigrants to Canada, and later the longitudinal immigration database, we uncovered some interesting differences between sponsored parents and grandparents and other immigrants.

Some differences provide ammunition for the burden narrative, as sponsored parents and grandparents are more likely to be women with less education, have less work experience, have weaker official language skills, be less likely to be married, and be older. However, they are not as elderly as some might expect. The average age of sponsored parents and grandparents in the LSIC is 60. Almost 70% are under the age of 65. This calls into serious question sentiments such as those expressed by a journalist from Edmonton who stated, “Most of these older immigrants will never work or will work very little between the time they are admitted and the time of their death.”

This leads to a second surprising finding. Only 30% of sponsored parents and grandparents state that their primary activity is being retired. The remaining 70% are either working—in fact, 40% of the population is working—self-employed, or in the case of many women, looking after family and home, all of which support the alternative contribution argument.

These findings suggest important directions for the type of research needed to effectively inform debates about family class immigration.

First is the need to recognize immigration, integration, and settlement as a family experience. Family class immigrants are, by definition, part of a larger social unit. Hence, arguments based on their outcomes as individuals, especially those that focus on economic indicators, are grossly misleading.

Second, our analysis shows support for the alternative contributions argument. Sponsored parents and grandparents are active, which supports the contention that further research is warranted to establish how sponsored parents and grandparents may not only be contributing to the best interests of the family, but also, through their social and cultural reproductive activities, to the best interests of the state.

I would therefore ask that future policy directions be supported by a very strong research base, one that starts with the recognition of immigration as a family project, and one that acknowledges the very many and intersecting ways that members of a family collectively can contribute to the well-being of both their family and their country.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. VanderPlaat.

Ms. Zahid, you have five minutes, please.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will take this opportunity to thank all of our witnesses for providing their input to this important study, and for all the work they are doing with the new immigrants.

My first question is for Ms. George. It's really a pleasure to hear from someone with your level of experience and expertise.

Adaptation to a new country is a complex process. Immigrants who are dissatisfied with their settlement experience seriously contemplate leaving Canada. In your paper “To Stay or Not to Stay: Characteristics Associated with Newcomers Planning to Remain in Canada”, you examine some factors that would encourage new immigrants to stay in Canada once they have arrived, despite the difficulties they might be facing in the adaptation process.

Could you speak to the importance of the presence of a spouse or an extended family in the decision to make Canada a permanent home?

[Usha George]

Definitely.

That study, particularly, was about all immigrants who came into the country and were here for less than five years.

They found that the social capital they had in terms of the family, as well as the networks they created within and outside of their ethnic community, provided a strong impetus for them to feel a sense of belonging, to feel that Canada was their second home, and to describe themselves as Indo-Canadians, or whatever country they were from—that kind of hybrid identity we talk about. It was always seen that those social networks, particularly the family, were extremely important.

In another study, we also found that women, the wives in the family, asserted their agency, so to speak. While they went out to look for work and so on, they networked with other people, who were sometimes from their own community but sometimes from outside the community, and brought information back to their husbands to say, “Here is a job. Here is a company that's hiring these kinds of workers. Why don't you go and try it out?”

I have another paper called “Tell me what I need to know”. It's basically immigrant women saying to us, “Give me the information. I'll process it. I am able to look for it.” It is all within the confines of the family that these things happen.

People who leave are sometimes disappointed that they don't have the kind of job they wanted, but many of them feel they don't belong. The presence of family and friends is certainly a very important consideration for them.