Mr. Speaker, the family dimension is by far the most compelling part of what I see first-hand.
Generally speaking, when an immigrant with a problem comes into my office, he or she comes with two or three children and a story that would break one's heart. They come for a sympathetic ear, but they are also looking for me to turn that sympathy into action on the part of the government. All too often that is not possible, probably 90%, 95%, 99% of the time. These are tragic stories of people who, in many cases, for no reason whatsoever have run afoul of a system that is not working but broken.
I will give members an example. A woman had taken maternity leave and was sponsoring her husband to come here from another country. She had a really good job and took maternity leave. She was then in a car accident a month later. Because she had taken maternity leave and had used up her EI, she no longer qualified for EI. Her employer kept her job for her. However, she did not have enough money for food. As she and her baby needed to eat, she went to the welfare office. The welfare office then told immigration, which then said, “You're no longer qualified to sponsor your husband”.
That is the kind of loophole that results from EI and immigration problems and causes a Catch-22, which I see in my office all the time. These are the kind of problems that we should be looking at fixing.
I agree that we should make it possible for the government to remove foreign criminals. I always thought that it already did have that ability. If it is telling us that there is a lengthy appeal process that violent criminals should not have access to, maybe the government is right.
However, that is not exactly what the bill says. I think we need to expand the scope of what we do and look at all the problems that we face in the immigration world.