Citizenship and Immigration committee  Probably more training of immigration officers would help. I get the feeling from immigration officers that they don't feel comfortable asking these questions. They don't really know how to judge the genuineness of a marriage in a lot of cases. One simple fix that might eliminat

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The only time this comes into play is if they are sponsoring parents or grandparents. I believe someone in the next session may be speaking about that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's been very onerous; I think all of us have found that. It's a very much increased level of support that you need in order to provide for parents and grandparents than that, for instance, needed to support other family members. It's the low-income cutoff plus 30%. The fact tha

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not sure I understand your question. Is it that there would be fewer people coming?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In order to bring more in one class, it would have to cut out more...? The problem with having an unreasonably low age of dependency, such as 18, is that Canada is losing out on some families. In my own experience in my practice, I have seen this. Once they hear a family—say th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In a way, they have. They have made some amendments now, as of two years ago, to bring them into a permanent resident stream, with serious—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would leave that to the committee to decide, but I don't see anything wrong with that. I can't see any downside to it. It would serve the needs of these immigrants, mostly women, coming in. It's one of the few programs that were, at least at one time, open to them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would just echo that. It's very unfair, and in a way quite unsavoury, in that it seems to put a spouse's immigration status in Canada in the hands of her or his Canadian spouse, which I don't think sends a great message. I've spent years trying to tell new immigrants, especiall

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's a very good question. Why are they temporary foreign workers, when the whole program is geared toward giving them permanent residence? A very salutary change that happened several years ago was trying to take away the uncertainty of the temporary work aspect. The whole progr

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I think that would be easy to do, even by way of policy or ministerial instructions. As far as I know, it's something that was dealt with very quickly and expeditiously. When they changed the date of the age of dependency two years ago, they did have transition provisions th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It is, as I understand it, retroactive in that sense. For instance, in the case of live-in caregivers—and perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong—the age of the child was locked in at the date when the live-in caregiver first applied for a work permit to come to Canada. If th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, that's another of the things that this caregiver, Marcellina, lost when her case became a humanitarian case instead of a live-in caregiver case. If there is concurrent processing of overseas dependants, the children overseas are locked in at the age that they have. If they'r

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I come to this committee with a background of about 32 years as a refugee and immigration lawyer. I deal a lot with the Spanish-speaking community, so I have a lot of experience with people from Central and South America, but also other parts of the world. I want to