Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 6th, 2016

[Zena Al Hamdan]

Of the 310,000, only 10,000 being dedicated to parents and grandparents is really not sufficient for the numbers of, specifically, skilled workers who are admitted to Canada. If you count that each one of them will be bringing.... The cap should be at least doubled, because a lot of them will need to go back to the labour market with the help of their parents, to assist with the family unit. At least double that would be sufficient, considering that.

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

My question was with respect to parents and grandparents.

[Huda Bukhari]

I'll take that on. The number to bring in at the moment is 10,000.

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

Yes.

[Huda Bukhari]

Just to give you an overview, at our centre we see 4,500 new clients a year. Of those 4,500 new clients a year we see—and this is within a one-year span—I'd say that almost 95% to 97% ask about parental sponsorships. We're thinking that in just our little centre within our little community, the Arab Community Centre, let's say 4,000 clients are asking to have their parents come in, and that's just us.

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

What should be the amount?

[Huda Bukhari]

I feel that the amount should be up to 30,000 a year, parents and grandparents.

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

Mr. Wang, do you have an opinion on this?

[Zaixin Ma]

We agree with what Ms. Bukhari just proposed, 30,000 a year. We would also like to thank the current ministry for increasing the number to 10,000, but it's not enough: 30,000 would be more suitable, but we would like to actually cancel this quota. We're looking at other classes; they don't have a quota, so why are we restricting the numbers for family class? The people who are applying for family reunification are Canadians. They've already been living in Canada, so why would we place restrictions on our Canadian population?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Ma.

Ms. Kwan, you have seven minutes, please.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, to all the presenters, for appearing before our committee today.

Mr. Wang and Mr. Ma, given that your organization represents a large number of groups in the Lower Mainland who are from the immigrant community, I'm wondering if you have heard of some specific stories or examples that you can share with us about where the problems are with respect to the parent/grandparent application process.

[Zaixin Ma]

I think the main problem is that the waiting time is too long. Many people need to work; they need to take care of their children. They really hope that their grandparents or parents can come to help them with child care in order to allow both husband and wife, father and mother, to work in the labour force.

When they finally come after all these years.... Sometimes it's not four years to five years. We apply in Canada, and it takes four to five years to review it in Canada. Then, we will submit these papers to Beijing, and the embassy will have to work on it for another four to five years. So, added up, it is eight to 10 years.

If someone has to wait eight to 10 years—this is a very precious time of life—some of these young families are afraid of having children. They don't want to have children because they would have nobody to take care of them.

Some families, after they do have children, and both parents need to work, they send their children back to China, so their grandparents can help take care of them. This is one solution, but it is not that reasonable. These are our own children, so why should our grandparents raise them in China? When they come back to our society, they are faced with a lot of pressure.

We hope that the IRCC can understand the challenges we face in our lives and allow our parents and grandparents to come over, so we can go back into the labour force.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

I think we've heard from everybody just now. I'd like to turn to the financial requirements, to talk about the onerous pressure for families, both on the super visa side as well as the citizenship side, and on the threshold, as well, for sponsorship and the amount on that.

On that issue, I'm wondering what thoughts you might have on what governments can do. Should the threshold, for example, for sponsorship be lowered to a smaller amount, a shorter length of time in terms of proof of income? I would love to hear your thoughts about the financial aspect, or if you have stories that you can share with respect to that for us.

I will go to the delegation here in Ottawa, and then we'll go to the delegation on video conference.

[Huda Bukhari]

Thank you.

We are seeing larger families, and we have been seeing that over the past maybe year and a half or so.

To give you an example, two weeks ago, we had a client who came into our office wanting to sponsor his parents from the Middle East. He has seven children. He and his wife, the family, make up nine people. For him to sponsor his parents will make it an 11-person family. The staff member came back and said, “How do I tell him that he will not be able to get his parents here?” He wanted his parents to come in to assist with the children, to help with the children and with child care.

My recommendation would be to lower the requirements from what it is right now. Lower the threshold and lower the basic requirements from what they are at the moment, and, as well, lower the sponsorship years, the undertaking that they're going to be taking on for 10 years. Quite often, we see that the parents pass away before the 10 years is over.

We would like to see it lowered to five years, if possible, for the parents and the grandparents. The table of funds that is available for them to be sponsored needs to be lowered for many of our clients. They're in need of their parents to come in. They feel that they are not complete. As with many other cultures who come here, a family does not only include the mother, father, and the children, so you've left a part of you behind.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Wang or Mr. Ma, on the financial requirements.

[Zaixin Ma]

We also would like to see the fees lowered. We have a friend from Qingdao in China. He's around 35 years old and is a white-collar worker. His wife is pursuing a Ph.D. degree. They have one child who is one and a half years old. His wife needs to stop school to take care of this child. They cannot satisfy the income requirement because the wife is not working and doesn't have an income. There are many examples like that. They are highly educated young people. If they could have their parents come over to help, they would be able to better participate in building Canadian society. If they cannot reunite with their parents, they will miss their parents as well. Not only do they have problems taking care of their children, but they also worry about their parents and have to visit their them back in China.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Ma.

[Zaixin Ma]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Ms. Dzerowicz, go ahead.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thanks so much for the excellent presentations and for being here today.

I'm going to start by following a little the line of Ms. Kwan's original questioning. The five-year processing time does seem long, and I'm also particularly disturbed to find that it might be five more years in another country as well for processing.

I want to dig a little deeper. I actually go through every single case that comes through my office—every single case. I want to understand what is happening. There are different reasons for the length of time. In some cases, it's even different parts of the world. Sometimes it's a security check that's holding it up. Sometimes it's medical that's holding it up. Sometimes we don't even know; it's just in the process and we don't quite know where it's gone in the ether.

I guess I just want to get a sense from you, in your experience, where you're seeing the delays. Sometimes it's an error that was made on the application, okay? If I can get a little more specifics from you about.... We're seeing for the most part that it tends to be the security that tends go along the application. If you can give us maybe a little bit more information, that would be very helpful to us.

[Huda Bukhari]

I'm sorry. Can I take this first?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Yes, please.

[Huda Bukhari]

Thank you.

Over the past six months, or eight months or so, we have been hearing from the Yemeni community. The Yemeni community is new to our centre. We haven't seen as many clients as the Yemeni community come in. This is an example. They are convention refugees. They've become convention refugees, and it is typically the males who are here. They have family members behind in Yemen, and they put in the applications to have them brought over with them. These are not the general sponsorship forms, but family reunification.

The issue that is happening in Yemen at the moment is that this particular family, or several of them that we have begun to see, cannot leave their little area where they're living because of bombardment. They cannot find a Canadian-designated medical doctor within that area so they can go through the medical check. They cannot go to a police station so they can have their security certificates issued or have their fingerprints taken.

We hear stories, and we see pictures when the clients come into our office showing us that the building right next door to their family has been bombed and they can't leave that area. That is what we're hearing from the Yemeni community and seeing now almost on a daily basis. We have heard recently that IRCC has designated a medical doctor for the clients to go to get their medical checks done, but this particular doctor as well lives far away from most of our clients' homes, and they can't leave one area to go to that doctor.

We have been working closely as well with the Canadian Council for Refugees in addressing this particular issue. This is the Yemeni community, but in general security certificates take a very long time. We appreciate that. We understand that they need to happen, but by the time the security certificate is done, the medical has become obsolete. The clients need to go back and redo the medical, pay again to have these medical tests done—and medicals are very expensive back home in the Middle East.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

When you say that the security takes a long time, is that a year, six months, or a year and a half?

[Huda Bukhari]

It can take more than a year. It can take up to two years, and medicals are only good for six months.

If it's, let's say, a wife and three children, and they need to pay about $200 per person for a medical checkup, then that's $600 twice a year to get the medical checkups again. Then they start waiting again to be re-interviewed.

There are issues that are happening on that end. Yes, I acknowledge that there are issues where the clients will not fill in or sign the documents, and those do come back, which delays the process. However, we can deal with those from our end with the staff. Things such as expediting the security checks and expediting the medical files will really speed matters.