Jain: Canada’s governments have failed to maintain the integrity of our immigration system

I used to brag at international conferences about how well Canada integrates immigrants, and how no mainstream Canadian political party is opposed to immigration. But an anti-immigrant sentiment is now on the rise – and I believe this is because federal and provincial governments across party lines have failed in terms of “program integrity,” to borrow government buzzwords.

….Perhaps the greatest failure in terms of program integrity relates to representatives. In 2019, during the review period for the second attempt at regulating non-lawyer immigration consultant representatives, the Liberal government decided to allow for a third attempt. With a federal election looming at the time, this may have been because of a perception that immigration consultants could influence outcomes in Ontario’s politically crucial 905 region. There are about 12,000 immigration consultants compared with about 2,000 immigration lawyers, so it’s no exaggeration to say that they have a major impact on our system; some falsely promise a guaranteed pathway to permanent residency for international students. There have been countless stories in the media about such consultants selling jobs and assisting with fake refugee claims. Their cost to our system is enormous, in terms of unmerited application filings, as well as frivolous and expensive tribunal and court appeals.

Sadly, while temporary residents are being blamed for hospital wait times and a lack of affordable housing, they are often victimized first by immigration consultants in their own communities and then by government policies, such as the one currently being considered to limit coveted postgraduate work permits by linking them to areas in which there are labour shortages.

Then again, maybe the immigration consultants will be proven right if the government chooses to solve the crisis with the ultimate program-integrity capitulation: a blanket amnesty. Consider this CBC headline from last month: “One way to decrease temporary residents is to make them permanent, minister suggests.”

If our immigration system is losing integrity – along with public confidence – then governments have themselves to blame.

Ravi Jain is an Ontario-based immigration lawyer at Jain Immigration Law. He has served as the national chair of the Canadian Bar Association Immigration Section and as a president of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association.

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