‘Forgotten Canadians’ are paying a price for delays in processing their citizenship papers. A new study reveals the real cost

2021/06/25 4 Comments

Makes reference to earlier IADB study on economic impact of citizenship delays (Citizenship and the Economic Assimilation of Canadian Immigrants ):

An engineer for one of the world’s largest car manufacturers in Ontario, Syeda Umar says a Canadian passport will be handy for her to travel for work assignments — and crucial for advancing her career.

So as soon as the Pakistani immigrant met all the citizenship requirements, she submitted her application in September 2019.

Now, almost 22 months later, she is still waiting to be scheduled a citizenship exam stalled amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her job as a senior quality engineer requires her to deal with the company’s global supply chain and, at times, she’s expected to spend weeks and months overseas on assignment.

Due to the visa limitation as a Pakistani passport holder, Umar says twice so far her boss has had to ask her colleagues to step in to cover the business trips for her.

“This is starting to affect my job and my career,” says the 33-year-old Woodstock, Ont., resident, who arrived here in 2014 for a postgraduate degree at University of Waterloo and became a permanent resident in 2017.

“I feel extremely frustrated and sad.”

But even more is at stake with any prolonged delay in citizenship acquisition, according to a recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank that examined the relationship between citizenship and Canadian immigrants’ economic assimilation.

Based on data from the Canadian Labour Force Survey between 2013 and 2017 and Permanent Resident Landing File, researchers looked at the wages of naturalized citizens in two cohorts — demarcated by the Conservative government’s citizenship reform implemented in 2015 that raised an applicant’s minimum physical presence in Canada from three to four years.

They found that those affected by the change were less likely to hold a position in the public sector, and more likely to be self-employed and have a job with continuously varying work schedules. These immigrants also tended to work more hours a week and for a lower wage than peers not affected by it.

“Delaying citizenship eligibility by one year adversely affected Canadian residents’ wages,” noted the report. “Access to better jobs explains a citizenship premium of 11 per cent in higher wages among naturalized migrants.”

The research attributes the wage gaps to the role citizenship plays in hiring decisions by employers and raising migrants’ “bargaining power” on the job. Canadian citizenship also opens the door for skilled Canadian immigrants to jobs in the U.S. that had been out of their reach before.

Canadian Citizenship Process Advocates, a grassroots group formed by applicants caught up in the COVID-19-related backlog, said the immigration department should heed the findings of this report and take the impacts of delayed citizenship seriously.

“We are the forgotten Canadians in the pandemic. The citizenship backlog has not been a priority for the government because the idea is they’re already living in Canada and working, so there’s no harm in delaying the citizenship,” said Ahsan Umar, whose group has more than 1,000 members on Facebook.

“Citizenship not only has a material impact on applicants and we also suffer mentally from the stress due to the delay.”

According to the immigration department, the number of citizenship applications in the backlog has ballooned from 208,000 at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 to more than 374,100 as of the end of April of this year. Some 109,750 applicants are waiting for a virtual citizenship test and 17,300 for an online citizenship ceremony. The rest were in the early stage of the process.

Department spokesperson Julie Lafortune said officials have devoted considerable resources to improve processing and made great progress in moving applicants through the system faster.

Despite the many challenges posed by the pandemic lockdowns and disruptions, Canada welcomed 109,744 new Canadian citizens last year. As of April, 67,000 citizenship applicants had been invited to take an online citizenship knowledge test and 63,600 for a virtual citizenship ceremony.

“The pandemic has had a significant impact on Canada’s immigration system, and we understand the frustrations of applicants at this difficult moment,” Lafortune said.

“This means that things will move faster, everyone will be able to apply online, applicants will have to jump through fewer hoops and aspiring Canadians can start contributing faster.”

She said the department now has the capacity to conduct 5,000 online citizenship tests per week, which is in line with the pre-COVID-19 testing rates.

That’s not quick enough to reduce the backlog that continues to build during the pandemic, said Sameeh Al Dajani, who submitted his family’s application in July 2019 and is still waiting to be scheduled a citizenship test.

What frustrates the Ottawa accountant from Jordan most is how a couple of friends who submitted their applications after his actually have been scheduled the exam, one of them is now already a new citizen.

“We certainly need more transparency from the immigration department. We need to know what’s going on there,” Dajani said.

Source: ‘Forgotten Canadians’ are paying a price for delays in processing their citizenship papers. A new study reveals the real cost

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About Andrew
Andrew blogs and tweets public policy issues, particularly the relationship between the political and bureaucratic levels, citizenship and multiculturalism. His latest book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias, recounts his experience as a senior public servant in this area.

4 Responses to ‘Forgotten Canadians’ are paying a price for delays in processing their citizenship papers. A new study reveals the real cost

  1. Robert Addington says:
    2021/06/27 at 18:51

    Disgraceful. No applicant who has met all the requirements should have to wait years to receive citizenship.

    Reply
  2. Andrew says:
    2021/06/28 at 05:33

    Citizenship processing has always had ups and downs, reflecting it being a secondary priority for IRCC.

    Reply
    • Robert Addington says:
      2021/06/28 at 07:14

      Exactly. Note the post-2015 word order in the name of the Department, with citizenship now in third place.

      Reply

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