Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to appear before you today and to provide you with information on immigration enforcement, in particular how it relates to undocumented workers. The Canada Border Services Agency is responsible for enforcing the provisions of the Immigra

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can tell you a little bit about 2006-07 and the record for that year. There were 12,636 people removed from the country, and 15% were criminals. Therefore, we're looking at around 1,900 or just under 2,000.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have an exact number of criminals we would be working on that I can give you right now. We have a working inventory of around 22,000 who are removal ready right now. About 8% of those in the working inventory who are ready for removal have criminal backgrounds.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I guess that question would probably be for my colleague. But if I may, Mr. Chair, I would just respond to the criminal element briefly. I'd just like to say that when you look at how we remove people.... We have a priority list, as I mentioned, which starts off with the serious

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, I would say the answer to that would be zero, in that we don't remove Canadian-born Canadian citizens. The parents may be subject to removal, and obviously they will be likely to take the kids with them, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We certainly respect that you want to keep the families together and so on. But as far as keeping statistics on the number of those cases where that has occurred....

Citizenship and Immigration committee  To your first question on the process, I think it was mentioned a bit earlier that all of the applicants have due process rights, of course. What we tend to see is the removals end of the process. It may take three or four years to actually come into place, because by the time a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly whenever a person is identified for removal they are called in for an interview. During the interview that would all be discussed. The timing and arrangements would be made with the officer at that time.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I actually have that number for you. The last fiscal year we spent $23,433,000 on the removals program. Just to be clear, we have four lines of business in our internal inland enforcement area--

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's on the removals program specifically.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not sure exactly. I'd have to get the exact figure for you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Unless they mentioned they wanted to apply for refugee status or other measures kicked in.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My expert in the area who's been out there doing that job has advised me they're entitled to due process, so we'd have to respect that due process.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's very hard without knowing all the details and what the actual person said when they arrived, but they would be turned around.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's right, so whatever they present to us we have to follow.