Swiss government rejects automatic citizenship for those born in Switzerland

2022/06/20 Leave a comment

Of note:

On 15 June 2022, a proposal put forward by Stefania Prezioso Batou, a federal parliamentarian from Geneva, to grant automatic citizenship to those born in Switzerland was rejected by 112 to 75 votes in Switzerland’s federal parliament, reported 20 Minutes.

Batou would like to see the introduction of jus soliwhere a child born in Switzerland to foreign parents and schooled in Switzerland would automatically qualify for Swiss citizenship at the age of 18.

Those against the idea argued that being born and raised in Switzerland did not guarantee integration. In addition, automating the process at a federal level would run counter to cantonal independence on the naturalisation process.

A similar proposal was rejected in December 2021 by the Council of States, Switzerland’s upper house.

Unrestricted jus soli, or birthright citizenship, is rare beyond North and South America, where it remains the norm. Beyond these regions, only Chad, Lesotho, Tanzania, Tuvalu and Pakistan have it, while another 30 odd nations have restricted forms of it.

Gaining Swiss citizenship is slow and difficult. It requires a minimum of 10 years residence in Switzerland on the right kind of permit and a long list of other requirements. Applications for Swiss nationality must be approved by the federal administration, cantons and the municipality where the applicant resides. In the end, many who call Switzerland home never get around to becoming Swiss, sometimes after several generations.

Source: Swiss government rejects automatic citizenship for those born in Switzerland

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Chris Selley: Asking a baby to get help from Russia is another Ottawa disgrace

2022/06/20 Leave a comment

These kinds of stories are showing up more regularly, given the (small) number of cases and the publicity of the court case and efforts by the lawyer and advocates to generate public attention.

The advantage of the first generation cut-off remains its clarity and simplicity to administer in a consistent manner, in contrast to the previous provisions which were not. But part of the “package” when the change was made over 10 years ago were provisions for statelessness whose implementation would take into account the particular circumstances, implicitly in an understanding if not compassionate manner.

This would appear to be one of those situations where IRCC could have shown more common sense in reviewing the case.

Unfortunately, we can’t be surprised by the obtuseness regarding Russia given Global Affairs and their Minister’s Office regarding the Russia Day embassy reception:

Recent events have called ever more into question Canada’s basic competencies on the world stage, both on the ground and especially in the back office. We made a hash of evacuating our Afghan friends as the Taliban retook the country, then forced many who escaped to wait for months while we churned through their paperwork. The same delays are plaguing many Ukrainians who accepted Canada’s offers of help. Speaking of Ukraine: A senior foreign affairs official’s presence at the Russian embassy’s garden party continues to boggle the national mind. On the much more mundane end of the spectrum: With six months’ notice, IRCC failed to approve a visa for popular Formula One reporter Karun Chandhok in time for this weekend’s Montreal Grand Prix.

Is it sloth? Understaffing? Active malice? It’s difficult to tell. But the story of the Burgess family — father and husband Gregory, mother and wife Viktoriya, and baby Philip, who currently live in Hong Kong — combines all these threads into a perfectly absurd package.

I first spoke to Gregory around six months ago. He is a 46-year-old Edmontonian with deep, permanent roots (and citizenship) in Canada and nowhere else — his great-grandparents immigrated to Alberta from Ukraine in 1894 — but who just happened to have been born in Connecticut. Because his infant son Philip was the second consecutive generation born on foreign soil, our citizenship law does not automatically recognize Philip as Canadian. Gregory and Viktoriya, who is Russian, nevertheless wish to relocate eventually to Canada and think it reasonable they be allowed to do so.

The bureaucrats at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) are having none of it.

Six months ago, the situation was approaching emergency: Gregory’s and Viktoriya’s work visas were soon to expire. Things have stabilized since, Gregory told me this week over Zoom while wrangling a seven-month-old at 6 a.m. “Hong Kong has been very humane to us,” he said, including issuing Philip a Hong Kong identity card. That’s at least proof that a government recognizes his existence, but it offers no path to citizenship.

The Burgesses and their lawyers and advocates quite reasonably insist Philip is stateless as defined in the 1954 UN Convention: “a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law.” In keeping with Canada’s international obligations, the Citizenship Act compels minister Sean Fraser to unilaterally grant citizenship in some cases of statelessness, and invites him to in others.

But when Gregory filed an application for Philips’ citizenship on grounds of statelessness, he got an amazing answer: Basically, IRCC wants proof some other country won’t take the kid off their hands.

On June 3, “senior decision maker” E. Nguyen wrote to Burgess asking for “a resual (sic) letter and/or correpondence (sic) from the American authorities advising that Philip … does not have a claim to American citizenship.” (Refusal and correspondence are the mistyped words.)

The answer is a bit complicated, but nevertheless U.S. citizenship rules are clear and easily Googleable: The simple answer is no.

It gets better: E. Nguyen wants the same refusal letter — no word of a lie — from the Russian authorities.

These are the Russian authorities raining death on Ukraine, heavily sanctioned by Ottawa, whose garden parties we must on no account attend. Canada’s travel advisory for Russia flashes bright red: “If you are in Russia, you should leave.”

Oh, and senior decision-maker E. Nguyen requires these documents within 30 days. IRCC would struggle to order a pizza in 30 days.

Even if the Burgess family were content to live in a pariah state run by a warmongering madman, Russia wouldn’t be a realistic option: Russian citizenship rules, also easily Googleable, stipulate Gregory would need to formally agree to Philip gaining Russian citizenship through his mother — but Gregory would have no immediate claim to citizenship himself. What parent would consent to the potential splitting up of his family?

When I wrote about this in January, two people with intimate knowledge of the IRCC bureaucracy and the Citizenship Act objected to my characterization of the second-generation-born-aboard rule as a “dumb law, easily fixed.” I remain convinced: Instead of judging prospective infant citizens by their parents’ accidental birthplaces, we should judge them by their parents’ substantial connection to Canada, just as we do for would-be naturalized citizens.

Admittedly, though, that’s only a fix in law. If it takes two or three or four years for IRCC to determine such “substantial connections,” families like the Burgesses will still be left in the lurch. And many will be in much more perilous situations than the Burgesses are.

In the meantime, there is an easy fix: Sean Fraser, the minister, can grant citizenship to anyone he chooses, any time he likes, as often as he likes. Unfortunately, with more than 24 hours’ notice, IRCC could not manage to respond to my questions, which included “why won’t he?”

Gregory is admirably equanimous about all this. “I don’t want to overdramatize things,” he told me. “It’s not terrible. … We’re OK here and everything’s fine.” But that uncertainty hangs over their heads, and they’re baffled. “I don’t know what the agenda is,” Gregory said. “I don’t know what’s achieved by this.”

Me neither.

There aren’t tens of thousands of Canadians in similar situations as the Burgesses, but there aren’t just dozens either. Whatever resources are being expended fighting seven-month-old Philip Burgess for Canadian citizenship — and a good few other children in the same situation — would surely be put to better use helping our various and shameful citizenship-and-immigration backlogs.

Source: Chris Selley: Asking a baby to get help from Russia is another Ottawa disgrace

And from the Star:

A Canadian with Ukrainian roots has been told his baby boy may have to apply — and be rejected — for Russian citizenship before he can become a Canadian.

“My son is not going to Russia and not becoming a Russian citizen when they’re killing Ukrainians,” says Gregory Burgess.

The bizarre situation has come about for a baby who is technically considered “stateless” because neither he nor his father was born in Canada.

Burgess, 46, has always considered himself a Canadian. He grew up in Edmonton and his Ukrainian great-grandparents arrived in what is today’s Alberta back in 1894.

But Burgess was born in the United States, where his father was then working, before coming to Canada at age seven. He acquired citizenship through his Canadian mother.

That, coupled with the fact that his son was born during the pandemic in Hong Kong, where Burgess is currently working, has meant the baby is not guaranteed Canadian citizenship.

It’s the result of a controversial policy change brought in by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper back in 2009 that was meant to curtail the number of “Canadians of convenience.”

“Canada is my home,” says Burgess. “I don’t have another home. It’s where my family has been for more than a hundred years.”

The so-called “second generation” citizenship cut-off against Canadians born abroad was introduced by the Conservative government after Ottawa’s massive effort to evacuate 15,000 Lebanese Canadians from Beirut during a month-long war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006.

The $85-million price tag of the evacuation effort sparked a debate over “Canadians of convenience” about individuals with Canadian citizenship who live permanently outside of Canada without “substantive ties” to Canada but were part of the government liability.

It’s now complicating things for Burgess.

The expat spent his formative years in Canada and graduated from the University of Alberta.

“My mother got us citizenship. And as soon as my Canadian citizenship was taken care of, one wouldn’t assume that somewhere down the road you become a lesser citizen because of it.”

Starting in 2004, he took up jobs in Asia. He met his now wife, Viktoriya Kharzhanovich, in 2017 when he was working in Shanghai. The following year, she applied unsuccessfully for a Canadian visa to accompany him to his cousin’s wedding.

In 2019, he started to explore the spousal sponsorship process to bring his common-law wife to Canada, just before the pandemic was beginning in China.

The couple moved to Hong Kong from China in June 2020 when he got a two-year employment contract in building information management there. Meanwhile, he and his wife, now 41, decided to start a family.

Due to the arduous paperwork required, they didn’t submit their spousal application until last November. It was during their preparation for the application when his lawyer noticed he wasn’t born in Canada and raised the issue about the two-generation citizenship cutoff for the yet-to-be born Philip.

Kharzhanovich, who had already been refused a visitor visa before, was more than seven months into her pregnancy and did not have an obstetrician and gynecologist or health insurance in Canada. She was also not scheduled for her COVID vaccination until after giving birth to Philip.

“After consulting physicians, researching flights, examining visa options, and studying quarantine rules, we determined that it was not safe or possible to fly to Canada for Viktoriya to give birth there,” says Burgess, who has since joined six other Canadian families in a Charter challenge against the citizenship cut-off rules.

Since neither Burgess nor his wife is a Hong Kong citizen or permanent resident, Philip doesn’t have permanent status in the former British colony, now part of the People’s Republic of China.

“It’s a lot of sleepless nights,” Burgess says. “It’s very important to me that I never lose my job (in Hong Kong) and nothing ever goes wrong because if it does, then that’s catastrophic. And so there’s that stress.

“It’s just constantly trying to get on the paperwork and it seems endless. I keep putting in paperwork or talking to the embassy or consulate. And I’ve been at it for nine months basically.”

At the advice of the Canadian consulate, Burgess applied for a two-year “limited validity passport” for Philip in November, which was ultimately refused by Passport Canada. Burgess’s own parents weren’t abroad serving in the Canadian military or for the federal or provincial governments at his birth in the U.S., hence his baby didn’t qualify.

Earlier this year, as a last resort, Burgess filed an application for a grant of citizenship under section 5 (4) of the Canadian Citizenship Act that gives Immigration Minister Sean Fraser the discretionary power to do so to “alleviate cases of statelessness or of special and unusual hardship or to reward services of an exceptional value to Canada.”

In a response to the family’s request this month, the immigration department gave the couple 30 days to provide proof of Philip having been refused a claim to American and/or Russian citizenship.

“Following a review of his application and supporting documentation, it appears that Philip Alexander Burgess may have a claim to American citizenship through yourself and to Russian citizenship through his mother, Viktoriya Kharzhanovich,” said the letter prepared by the immigration case management branch.

There was no mention or concern raised about Burgess’s and the family’s expiring status in Hong Kong, and the urgency to resolve the crisis.

“I feel like I’m being asked to show that I’m in duress. It’s continually asking, ‘show us it’s a bad situation.’ And I’m like it’s not bad yet, but it’s only because I’m staying ahead of the game,” says Burgess, who does not have an American passport or meet the “substantial connection” requirement to convey citizenship to Philip.

Although Philip is not at the end of his rope and may still acquire Canadian citizenship by naturalization if his father can successfully sponsor his mother and him to Canada, Burgess says he has yet to get an acknowledgment of receipt of his sponsorship application and the family is running out of status in Hong Kong.

Their lawyer, Sujit Choudhry, says Philip’s statelessness is only one of the factors for the consideration of the immigration minister, who should not overlook the “special and unusual hardship” the family is facing under the circumstances.

“The government’s insistence that Gregory seek Russian citizenship for Philip is Kafkaesque,” says Choudhry, who is also representing the other families in the ongoing Charter challenge against the citizenship act before the Superior Court of Ontario. “Canada has advised its citizens to not travel to Russia for geopolitical reasons.

“If Philip becomes a Russian citizen, Gregory will not be able to travel to Russia to take care of him. Canada’s Citizenship Act will produce a profoundly unjust family separation. This law is clearly unconstitutional.”

Source: ‘Kafkaesque’: Will the infant son of a Ukrainian Canadian need to turn to Russia for citizenship?

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Mills: Just another day in Canada’s passport purgatory

2022/06/18 Leave a comment

Useful account. Positive note – the patience of applicants and the “kind, helpful and patient the front-line passport officers”:

The sun was barely over the treetops when I drove into the parking lot of the Passport Canada office in the Rideauview Mall on Meadowlands Drive. It was 5:45 Monday morning and the line was already snaking along the side of the building facing Prince of Wales, and around the corner. I found my place in line, extracted a novel from my tote bag, and sat down cross-legged on the ground.

The office itself wouldn’t open until 8:30 a.m. There were already more than 30 people ahead of me.

I had known my visit to the passport office would be a lengthy one. For weeks, media outlets had chronicled the chaos: the long wait times, the desperate travellers who camped out overnight at passport offices in hopes of getting their documents quickly.

I had snacks, a bottle of water and a variety of reading material. As the chill of the morning seeped into my bones from the cold concrete, I wished I had thought to bring a folding chair, as many others had. But at least it wasn’t raining. I’d also been able to book an entire day off work to devote to my mission: getting our daughters’ passports in time for a weeklong holiday in Maine.

My family’s adventures with Passport Canada started in February when our passports expired. We got new photos taken, and filled out renewal applications for my husband and myself, as well as brand-new adult passport applications for our twin daughters, who were then 17. We dutifully mailed them off a full nine weeks before a planned trip to New York City in May.

April came and went with no passports. By the beginning of May, we were starting to worry. We had a flight booked to New York on May 21 — an early birthday gift for the girls, who would turn 18 the following week. I decided to phone Passport Canada.

The first time, I called six times just to get on the line and there were 187 people ahead of me on hold. The second time, I called 35 times to get on the line and there were more than 200 people ahead of me. When I finally got through, I learned that my daughters’ applications had been rejected because we had not provided sufficient proof of Canadian citizenship … even though we sent back their old child passports. I had failed to include their original birth certificates.

We didn’t make it to New York. There was no way, however, that we were going to miss out on Maine, our favourite summer destination since the girls were little, and which we hadn’t seen in two years. This is what had brought me to Rideauview Mall.

They let us into the building around 7:30 a.m. The line re-formed. It started at the Passport Canada office door, stretched to the Prince of Wales entrance, and curved around and along the opposite wall. A young woman in line who must have been a camp counsellor at some point took on the role of directing new people who came through the door (those poor folks who thought an hour early was sufficient!) towards the end of the line.

I overheard people saying they were travelling that week. Even the next day. Two young men came through the door just before 8 a.m. hauling enormous rolling suitcases. There were families with young children and others with elderly relatives. One young guy near the end of the line recorded a video for his social media followers. I caught the words: “No, this is not a third-world country. This is Canada.”

And yet, there was a sense of camaraderie. Everyone was in the same boat, chatting with their line-mates about where they were going and when and sometimes about what had gone wrong with their applications. Many were clearly anxious, but also very civilized. I couldn’t help feeling thankful to be living in Canada rather than, say, Florida.

Finally, the office opened. The line advanced. Immediately, Passport Canada staffers began shouting information in both official languages, triaging people based on their departure dates, separating those who were picking up completed passports or whose files had been transferred from the walk-ins, and confirming (repeatedly) that everyone had proof they were travelling within the next 45 business days.

Eight hours and 15 minutes later, I left the office clutching a receipt that would allow me to pick up my daughters’ passports in 14 days. I had exhausted my snack supply, read 200 pages of my novel, and was consistently impressed with how kind, helpful and patient the front-line passport officers managed to be in the face of so much stress. I also had a lot of time to ponder what might make the process more efficient:

• Hire and train passport officers to be on standby even if they typically work in other areas so they can be pulled in temporarily at times like this. That would allow for the extension of office hours, which would help clear the backlog.

• Allow Canadian citizens who hold child passports to upgrade to adult passports through a renewal process rather than having them fill out a brand-new adult passport application as though they’ve never held a Canadian passport before. I’m certain this is the cause of a lot of errors and delays, as it was with us.

• Allow Canadian citizens who hold a current adult passport that’s about to expire to renew online. This would force the government to come up with some acceptable process for the use and verification of digital photos, but isn’t it past time for that?

• Develop a new electronic passport form that flags obvious errors, like not including an address or postal code for your guarantors while you’re filling it out (rather than having the passport officers flag it for you when you get to the office).

Canadian passports are precious things and issuing them is a basic function of our federal government. We’ve got to get it right. The front-line officers are doing their job exceptionally well under these circumstances. Now it’s up to our elected representatives to ensure this situation never happens again.

Lara Mills is a professor in the public relations program at Algonquin College.

Source: Mills: Just another day in Canada’s passport purgatory

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Immigration backlog in Canada reaches 2.4M

2022/06/18 Leave a comment

Good overview of the backlogs, with helpful charts (nice to see CTV investing in good data journalism). The pandemic, like in so many areas, highlighting long-standing government management and operational issues, one that IRCC has started to address but is a multi-year project given IT and other modernization:

The immigration backlog in Canada has ballooned to 2.4 million people, with over 250,000 applications adding to the pile over a one-month span alone.

That’s according to recent data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) across all categories, from temporary residence and permanent residence to citizenship applications.

“I have not seen backlogs like these in 16 years of my career as an immigration lawyer,” Rick Lamanna, director at Fragomen Canada, an immigration services provider, told CTV News in a phone interview on Thursday.

“Prior to the pandemic, things were running fairly well.”

The increased backlog has already led to frustrations for those waiting to receive an application update from IRCC.

The recent data only raises more questions than provides answers to the applicants in limbo.

Can’t see the graphs below? Click here

Despite being among the top five destinations with immigrant-friendly policies around the world, Canada is seeing an upward trend in backlogs since the pandemic.

Long processing times and a lack of communication and transparency are some of the many issues highlighted by families that reached out to CTVNews.ca.

‘EXTREMELY STRESSFUL’

Lamanna said changing processing times are preventing families and even businesses from planning anything ahead of time.

“If you were to go online right now, and take a look at the processing time, out of India, it’s taking close to a year,” he said.

Part of the problem he pointed out is that IRCC faced a cascading effect from the fall of Afghanistan and then the pandemic.

During COVID-19, IRCC staff was not deemed as “essential workers” so the backlogs only started to grow. Now with the Ukraine war, there is a massive backlog, he adds. Between March 17 and June 8, 2022, 296,163 applications were received under the program.

For most, the long delays have postponed their life decisions as they continue to wait in another country.

Kazim Ali applied for permanent residency through the Express Entry program in 2020 from Pakistan and has been waiting since to receive an update. He said he has no idea how long he has to wait until he begins his new life in Canada with his wife.

“Our lives have come to a screeching halt because of a lack of communication and no clear timeline on the processing delays,” Ali said in an interview with CTVNews.ca from Pakistan over a zoom call on Wednesday.

Ali said the estimated processing time was six months at the time of submission.

Despite repeated emails, Ali’s application seems to have come to a screeching halt. He said the IRCC helpline is of no help to those outside Canada.

He was told to reach out to the visa office that is processing his application. Currently, it lies in the London, UK office with no updates.

Ali has put a stop to his long-term plans–including his career, buying a home, and family planning.

He said the wait is now taking an agonizing toll on his mental and emotional health and has been “extremely stressful” for the couple.

“IRCC really needs a reality check and needs to understand that it is not only processing a bunch of papers but making decisions that are affecting lives of families and generations to come,” Ali said.

In an emailed statement to CTVNews.ca, IRCC’s communications officer Jeffrey MacDonald said that application inventories grew during the pandemic while health and travel restrictions were in effect, and it will take some time to fully recover.

McDonald said IRCC is moving towards a more integrated, modernized, and centralized working environment in order to help speed up application processing globally.

He said IRCC is also working to improve the level of service at the Client Support Centre (CSC).  Between April 2021 and March 2022, IRCC’s CSC communication lines received over 10.5 million inquiries (8.6 million by telephone and 1.9 million by email).

‘COVID IS NO LONGER AN EXCUSE’

But Mustakima Gazi, who works as a long-term care pandemic resident assistant, said COVID-19 can no longer be an excuse.

Gazi, a Canadian citizen from London, Ont., has been waiting for her husband’s spousal application since December 2021 and has seen incremental progress since she last spoke with CTVNews.ca in May.

But despite the application reaching the next stage, she remains discouraged.

The couple is a part of a Facebook community that includes families waiting for IRCC updates. She said that some who had submitted the request for medical exam ( a requirement for those filing for permanent residency) last year have still been waiting to get an update from IRCC.

Gazi’s husband lives alone in the Netherlands and with his application in limbo, is under immense mental stress.

Making matters worse, she said, are the processing times on the online portal that keep changing.

She said one would think that the processing time would decrease as applications are being processed.

“But that is not the case,” she said. “At one point the estimated time was 12 months, and the next week it was 23 months.”

Processing times for different visa categories [May vs. June]

Data was retrieved on May 6, 2022 and June 14, 2022 for comparison purposes and is subject to change on the website due to fresh updates.

Page 1 of 2

Table with 3 columns and 54 rows. Currently displaying rows 1 to 30.

Categories 14-Jun-22 6-May-22
PR Cards
Waiting for the first card 71 days 99 days
Renewing or replacing a PR card 60 days 70 days
Citizenship
Citizenship grant 27 months 27 months
Citizenship certificate (proof of citizenship) 17 months 17 months
Resumption of citizenship 23 months 23 months
Renunciation of citizenship 15 months 15 months
Search of citizenship records 15 months 15 months
Citizenship for adopted persons Part1: 10 months Part1: 12 months
Part 2: Varies by complexity Part 2: Varies by complexity
Family Sponsorship
Spouse or common-law partner living inside Canada 15 months 15 months
Spouse or common-law partner living outside Canada 23 months 22 months
Dependent child depends where the child lives depends where the child lives
Parents or grandparents 34 months 33 months
Adopted child/relative depends where the adopted child/relative lives depends where the adopted child/relative lives
Temporary residence (visiting/studying/working)
Visitor visa (from outside Canada) depends from where you are applying from depends from where you are applying from
Visitor visa (from inside Canada) Online: 166 days Online: 16 days
Paper: 29 days Paper: 27 days
Visitor extension Online- 196 days Online- 214 days
Paper:214 days Paper:216 days
Supervisa (parents/grandparents) depends where they live depends where they live
Study Permit (from outside Canada) 12 weeks 11 weeks
Study Permit (from inside Canada) 3 weeks 3 weeks
Study Permit extension Online: 65 days Online: 60 days
Paper: 193 days Paper: 219 days

Processing times vary based on: if the application is complete, how quickly applications are processed after they are received, how easily information is verified, how long the applicant takes to respond to any requests or concerns other factors. Additional information depends on the visa category applied for and is on the website.

Table: Deena Zaidi/CTVNews.ca Source: Government of Canada Created with Datawrapper

Gazi has tried to call IRCC many times to get more information on our application, hoping to speed things up, but has never been able to reach anyone who could provide her any answers on the status.

“Sometimes the helpline just gets disconnected without even putting me in a waiting line,” she said.

The one time that she got connected, the IRCC agent tried to help but could not provide any updates since the application was being processed outside Canada.

“Everyone is fighting a battle and trying their best to get through these hard times. We want to be close to our families who can support us,” she said. But the delay is leading to nothing but desperation.

‘ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION’

Among those frustrated by the lack of communication and transparency is Anne Marie Trad, a Canadian citizen waiting to be with her husband, Pierre Ajaltouni, since 2019.

The couple married in 2018 in Beirut, Lebanon and Trad filed for a spousal visa from there in 2019.

It has been over 50 months since.

Trad has tried all the routes to get updates: she contacted the MP office, reached out to her local MP, filled out web forms, and called the IRCC helpline. But nothing has helped.

Her husband’s spousal application was filed outside Canada (Beirut) so navigating through the application status is more complicated than those processed in Canada.

Trad said the status has been saying “doing a background check” since 2019.

In hopes of a quicker route, she filed for a visit visa from Canada in 2020. But even that has seen no momentum.

Trad last visited her husband in August 2021 and now worries that with Lebanon’s ongoing crisis, it could be increasingly difficult to make these visits.

The three-year wait has taken a toll on the couple’s mental health – leading to anxiety, and depression. Trad said her husband has lost a lot of weight and she is concerned about his health.

The couple took a legal route last year to get immigration officials to act on files caught up in delays – a writ of mandamus.

The legal route is definitely not cheap, Trad said, but she sees no better option to speed up the process.

“We just want to get our life back on track after wasting three years in waiting,” she said.

WHAT IS IRCC DOING?

MacDonald said that a number of factors can impact the application and these include the type of the application submitted, and how well and quickly applicants respond to the IRCC requests. These requests include biometrics and additional information. Verification and complexity of the application can also affect the processing time of an application.

To support the processing and settlement of new permanent residents to Canada, the government has committed $2.1 billion over five years and ongoing $317.6 million in new funding announced in Budget 2022.

With additional funding of $85 million from the 2021 Economic and Fiscal Update, IRCC is looking to reduce application inventories accumulated during the pandemic by hiring new processing staff, digitizing applications, and implementing technology-based solutions such as digital intake and advanced analytics.

Lamanna said the hiring will help reduce the backlogs but that itself will take some time.

“Even if IRCC hires more people, it could take months before any group of new hires is actually effective in tackling the backdrop since that would require new training,” he said.

He said digitizing is a step in the right direction but even that could take years before it is finally implemented and may not assist those who are currently waiting and may help new applicants in 2023.

“It is a very difficult situation,” he said.

HOW DID IT GET SO BAD?

Many immigration law firms have seen a spike in the mandamus applications. In over 10 months, Toronto -based law firm, Abramovich & Tchern has processed over 200 mandamus files.

It is unfortunate that applicants have to take this route, Lev Abramovich, an immigration lawyer at Abramovich & Tchern, told CTVNews.ca on Thursday.

Abramovich, who is not representing any of the applicants in this story, said it wasn’t COVID-19 itself that created the backlog, but it ultimately revealed the “archaic structure and the management style that is not very agile.

”After the pandemic hit, processing centers were operating with very limited capacity, and that partly contributed to the increasing backlogs.

Some application categories filed during the pandemic were paper-based and lay in offices, gathering dust for many months.

Abramovich said most mandamus applications his firm has received have been from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, India, and China.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Lamanna said one of the solutions is focusing on prioritizing groups or processes and fixing them instead of trying to have a catch-all approach. “So, people understand how to process these applications,” he said.

Abramovich said the existing system needs to be “centralized and agile.”

Many times, an application is stuck in an office outside Canada that may be partly functional due to a number of reasons such as shut down or remote work orders.

He said a centralized agile system would manage applications by redistributing them in different offices.

“And they will be processed, more or less based on when they came in, not based on the country of nationality or other factors which is deeply unfair,” Abramovich said.

Abramovich said the new immigration minister inherited the existing system and has been open to dialogue, and that an independent review could provide recommendations for a long-lasting change. He added an impartial investigation to understand the actual root causes will only help prevent something like this from happening in the future.

“We are dealing with human lives here and let’s not pretend it has something to do with COVID-19 and that finances alone are going to be sufficient,” he said.

Source: Immigration backlog in Canada reaches 2.4M

 

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Federal government now posting passport wait times online as long lineups continue

2022/06/15 Leave a comment

Interesting reference to consideration being given to issuing passports along with citizenship. Given that IRCC is responsible for both, eminently doable and makes sense, but not a high priority for IRCC and the government.

But this would be a real tangible service improvement for new Canadians, and an opportunity to integrate citizenship and passport pathways:

Passport offices are still dealing with a surge of applications, the minister responsible says, and wait times are “far from acceptable.”

Karina Gould says those long wait times are her top priority, but she cannot say when things may return to normal.

The federal government says 72 per cent of Canadians who apply for a passport in any manner will get it within 40 business days, while 96 per cent of people who submit their application in person will get their passport within 10 business days.

The government’s website now includes estimated wait times for visits to passport offices, updated three times a day, to help people plan.

On Monday afternoon you could expect to wait four hours and 45 minutes at the Ottawa location, three hours in Toronto, and six hours and 45 minutes in Vancouver.

Gould says her department is considering further changes, including moving the application process online.

She also says her department is working with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to determine if there’s a way to issue passports to people as they get their citizenship instead of requiring a separate application. Both examples will take time to implement.

There are typically between two million and five million passport applications per year in Canada. During the pandemic, only about 1.5 million passports were issued over two years.

As a result, passport staff were given other work during that time and Service Canada is now trying to shift that work elsewhere.

And while Gould says 2022 is on track to be at the high end of the typical range, close to five million, “we’ve typically been able to manage that volume throughout the year but we’re seeing the surge happening all at the same time, which of course is leading to long lineups.”

Australia’s passport processing times are six weeks, according to Gould, while it takes 10 weeks to get a passport in the United Kingdom and 11 weeks to get one in the United States.

Source: Federal government now posting passport wait times online as long lineups continue

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Turkish Bar Associations Union takes citizenship through investment to top court

2022/06/15 Leave a comment

Pushback on citizenship-by-investment program given negative impacts:

The Turkish Union of Bar Associations (TBB) has applied to the country’s top court for the reversal of a regulation allowing foreigners to gain Turkish citizenship through investment, Diken news site reported on Monday.

“The current regulation, which came into effect in 2013, is both in violation of the Constitution and lacking any legal foundation,” it cited the TBB as saying in the application submitted to the Council of State.

Turkey’s “Citizenship by Investment Programme,” which allows citizenship through the sale of housing to foreigners, came into effect almost a decade ago. The programme initially allowed foreigners who owned property in Turkey equivalent to $1 million to become citizens. This amount was reduced to 250,000 in 2018, sparking a rapid hike in foreigners seeking to own a home in the country.

The figure was increased to $400,000 on Monday, according to a decree published in the Official Gazette signed off by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The latest change was prompted by a spike in the price of new and existing homes of almost 100 percent annually, which has made it effectively impossible for citizens to purchase homes. Builders in the country are charging more for new homes after the raw material costs jumped, partly due to a slump in the value of the lira, which lost 44 percent of its value against the dollar in 2021 and around 25 percent this year.

“The Turkish Republic’s constitution urges that the conditions for attaining citizenship should be regulated through the law,” the TBB said. “There is no regulation in the (related) law, which states that …. Turkish citizenship can be obtained through investment made in foreign currency.”

The citizenship programme also provides a Turkish passport to foreigners who invest  $500,000 in government bonds, companies, investment funds or a local bank account.

Erdoğan’s government has come under criticism for offering investment incentives to foreign nationals as citizens continue to feel the squeeze of soaring inflation on their wallets.

Last month, Erdoğan said his government would help alleviate the cost of higher property prices by offering zero interest rate mortgages to low income families. He also said the government would provide financing for unfinished housing projects provided the developers froze prices for a year.

Source: Turkish Bar Associations Union takes citizenship through investment to top court

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Canada aiming to open online citizenship applications for multiple adults in fall 2022

2022/06/11 Leave a comment

Progress:

Couples and families with multiple adults will soon be able to apply for citizenship online, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

Currently, only single adult applicants can submit their citizenship applications online. However, IRCC told CIC News in an email that adults may be able to apply together in fall 2022. After that, the online portal will open to minors and families.

“IRCC is working towards an expansion of the e-Application in order to allow Adults (i.e., 18 or older) to apply online together as a family or a group, and is currently targeting a Fall 2022 implementation,” an IRCC spokesperson said. “Planning has commenced for further e-Application expansion to minors under 18 years of age, as well as adults and minors applying together as a family or a group.”

IRCC said following the implementation of the e-application, it will begin to develop “additional functionality for representatives.” Currently, representatives can only help prepare online applications, but cannot submit on a client’s behalf. They can communicate with IRCC on the applicant’s behalf before and after the online application is submitted.

“In November of 2021, IRCC updated the system so clients can submit the IMM 5476 – Use of Representatives form, allowing them to use the services of a representative in preparing their applications. We also updated the screening questions to allow clients working with representatives to submit their application electronically,” IRCC wrote.

“Following the implementation of the e-Application expansion to minors and groups, the Department will begin development of additional functionality for representatives.”

In August 2021, IRCC claimed online citizenship applications would open to families and minors later in the year, and to representatives in 2022.

IRCC opened an online portal to proof of citizenship applicants in November 2021.

Source: Canada aiming to open online citizenship applications for multiple adults in fall 2022

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Australia: Man suspected of joining Islamic State wins High Court challenge against government decision to strip him of his citizenship

2022/06/09 Leave a comment

Of note, significant curb on Ministerial discretion:

A key plank of the federal government’s foreign fighter laws has been struck down by the High Court, with the nation’s top judges ruling that suspected terrorists cannot be stripped of their citizenship by the Home Affairs Minister.

The case before the court involved Delil Alexander, who was jailed in Syria after allegedly joining Islamic State.

He claimed he could not be released from jail because he had nowhere to go, after the Australian government stripped him of his citizenship in July 2021.

Mr Alexander left Australia for Turkey, where he also holds citizenship, in 2013.

He told his family he was going to arrange a marriage and would return, but travelled to Syria where he is thought to have joined Islamic State.

The High Court noted an assessment by intelligence agency ASIO at the time found he was reported to have travelled to Syria with a group being helped by a known Australian Islamic State member.

In November 2017, Mr Alexander was arrested by a Kurdish militia and in 2019 was jailed for 15 years by a Syrian court.

He has since been pardoned by the Syrian government but has remained in jail because he cannot go back to Turkey, and Australia cancelled his citizenship.

No one, including Mr Alexander’s family and his lawyers, has heard from him since July last year.

Only judges can decide to strip citizenship if person hasn’t faced trial in Australia, court rules

The main issue in the case was whether the law allowing the Home Affairs Minister to strip him of his citizenship was valid under the Constitution.

“That sanction by the parliament may be imposed only upon satisfaction of the minister that Mr Alexander engaged in conduct that is so reprehensible as to be deserving of the dire consequence of deprivation of citizenship and the rights, privileges, immunities and duties associated with it,” the lead judgement in the decision said.

“The power to determine the facts which enliven the power to impose such a punishment is one which, in accordance with [Chapter 3] of the Constitution, is exercisable exclusively by a court that is a part of the federal judicature.”

Effectively the High Court ruled that while the government of the day could pass laws relating to citizenship, the consequence of stripping someone’s legislation without them facing trial on Australian soil was so serious it should only be handled by a judge.

Six of the seven justices agreed, with only Justice Simon Steward dissenting.

The new federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said they were still assessing the impact of the ruling.

But the pair played down the significance it may have for other foreign fighters who may pose a risk to Australia if they returned, arguing other measures, including Temporary Exclusion Orders, could prohibit people from returning to Australia for up to two years.

Government sources have told the ABC there are only two people who have had their Australian citizenship cancelled under the specific part of the Citizenship Act, which has now been struck down.

Mr Alexander, and the other individual, are both in jail.

It does not affect people such as Abdul Nacer Benbrika, who had his citizenship cancelled after being convicted of terrorism offences by an Australian court.

Mr Alexander’s lawyer disputes he had been involved with Islamic State

Mr Alexander’s lawyer, Osman Samin, said his client should never have had his citizenship stripped by the government and disputed the assessment by intelligence agencies that Mr Alexander had been involved with Islamic State.

He argued the evidence Syrian authorities relied upon to initially convict him was deeply flawed.

“We potentially have a person who was arrested in a part of Syria, which is not a declared area,” he told the ABC.

“Other than these purported admissions made by Mr Alexander under extreme torture, there is no other evidence that suggests he in any way participated in any terrorism-type conduct.

Mr Samin said there could have been far-reaching consequences if the legislation had not been struck out by the High Court.

“The concept in the legislation was that citizenship may be repudiated by disloyal conduct,” he said.

“Now, importantly, what constitutes disloyal conduct amounting to repudiation can be defined by parliament — so, therefore, while the laws were initially limited predominantly to terrorism-type conduct, if the law was deemed valid there is really no limitation on what the government in future could define as ‘disloyal conduct’.

Mr Samin said Mr Alexander’s sister, who was running the case on his behalf, was “extraordinarily relieved” but “equally anxious” about the circumstances her brother found himself in, languishing in a jail in Damascus.

“There are so many stories of foreign prisoners being killed in this particular prison that, of course, the family at the moment are only concerned with his welfare, and simply want to know whether he’s still alive essentially.”

Source: Man suspected of joining Islamic State wins High Court challenge against government decision to strip him of his citizenship

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Should permanent residents be allowed to vote in Ontario? Experts say it might be time

2022/06/08 Leave a comment

Haven’t seen many calls by experts for federal and provincial voting rights for Permanent Residents, only with respect to municipal election. As I have written before, not in agreement given the relatively straightforward path for Permanent Residents to become citizens (although the Liberal government delivering on its 2019 and 2021 election commitments to eliminate fees would help).

And why did Nagra not become a citizen given that she has lived in Canada for most of her life?

More substantively, the focus needs to be on measures to increase participation among eligible voters, than simply expand the pool, whether by age changes or immigration status:

Maneet Nagra wanted to vote in last Thursday’s Ontario election, and she even got a voter card in the mail. All she had to do was head to the polling station with one piece of ID and mark an X.

One big problem held her back: she’s a permanent resident and therefore isn’t allowed to vote.

“I got the card and I thought I could vote. I got kind of excited. And then, I searched it out and it turns out I can’t,” Nagra told CBC Toronto.

Source: Should permanent residents be allowed to vote in Ontario? Experts say it might be time

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Immigrants are suing the U.S. government over delays in citizenship process

2022/06/07 Leave a comment

Of note. Comparable delays as in Canada, although initial progress on reducing backlog. Canadian applications are stored in the IRCC Sydney processing centre (unless changed since my time), certainly more accessible than a cave in Kansas city:

A group of immigrants is suing the U.S. government, claiming that unreasonable delays have kept their citizenship applications on hold for years. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is the agency responsible for processing applications. But the recent lawsuit alleges that the agency moved a mass amount of applications to a storage facility at the beginning of the pandemic and never retrieved the documents, stalling the immigrants’ hopes of becoming U.S. citizens. Now that the agency is working at full capacity again, the applicants are demanding prioritization.

We wanted to know more about what’s going on here, so we called Kate Melloy Goettel. She is the legal director of litigation at the American Immigration Council, the legal nonprofit bringing this lawsuit on behalf of immigrants. Kate Melloy Goettel, welcome.

KATE MELLOY GOETTEL: Hi, Elissa.

NADWORNY: So first, can you give us the background on filing this lawsuit?

MELLOY GOETTEL: Yeah. So we started hearing a couple of months ago that people were really frustrated that they had filed for naturalization about two years ago and that their applications were stuck. For a lot of people, they were looking towards November and want to be able to vote in the election then. Others just want to be a bigger, fuller member of U.S. society. And so they were getting frustrated that their applications were stuck, and they had learned that it was because their immigration files needed to be retrieved from the National Records Center that operates a limestone cave in the Kansas City area.

NADWORNY: So the crux is that the files are not in the place they need to be.

MELLOY GOETTEL: Exactly.

NADWORNY: And is that what the government is saying is the reason for these delays? Have they provided a response?

MELLOY GOETTEL: Well, so a lot of the applicants know through their attorneys that their immigration files need to be retrieved. Some of them have heard, in fact, that they’re at these National Archives cave in the Kansas City area, while others have just learned that they’re not moving forward because their immigration files are delayed, and they need those immigration files to go forward with scheduling the naturalization interview and then continuing with the sort of bureaucratic processes that have to happen before the final step of swearing the oath as a naturalized U.S. citizen.

NADWORNY: Can you tell me about some of the clients you represent?

MELLOY GOETTEL: One of the clients is Thomas Carter (ph). He’s filed suit because he’s very fearful that he and his husband could be separated if they don’t share the same citizenship. He also has an infant child, and I think that that has really encouraged him to want to have roots in the United States with his newly growing family. He’s also anxious to participate in the electoral process and to put down roots, so he’s one of the applicants who has been waiting since 2020 to be naturalized.

NADWORNY: What are you asking the court to do?

MELLOY GOETTEL: So we’re asking the court to tell the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as well as the National Archives to prioritize these naturalization applications and to go in there and try to get these applications out so that they can move forward with processing the applications. As you can imagine, there’s a number of steps and bureaucratic process that has to take place in order to approve someone for naturalization, and that process takes many months. And so we’re really down to the wire now to get people naturalized for November’s election.

NADWORNY: So some reports say that it can take up to 24 months to complete the naturalization process. I’m wondering, how is what’s happening here different than the wait times applicants typically experience?

MELLOY GOETTEL: Well, the wait times that USCIS has recently published have been around 11 months. But what we also know more anecdotally is we’re hearing many, many stories of people who filed after these 13 plaintiffs getting scheduled for their naturalization interviews and actually going forward and taking the naturalization oath. So we know that they’re not processing these in any sort of systematic line but rather that there are people who applied in 2020 who are just stuck because, frankly, their immigration files are stuck.

NADWORNY: Yeah, because these are stories, you know, that – they have implications for their family, for their life. You know, it’s…

MELLOY GOETTEL: That’s right.

NADWORNY: …This ripple effect. Your organization is representing 13 named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, but how many are actually impacted here?

MELLOY GOETTEL: Well, we don’t know the exact number of how many are impacted, but I can tell you that since we filed our lawsuit, we have heard so many stories from individuals and from their attorneys that are stuck in the same position. So we do think this is a fairly widespread problem, and we’re hoping that, through this lawsuit, that we can really encourage the agency to prioritize naturalization and prioritize getting those files out and getting them scheduled.

NADWORNY: You’ve mentioned there is kind of a looming deadline. Your clients want to be able to vote in this year’s election this fall. Tell me about the timeline. Is that going to be possible?

MELLOY GOETTEL: With prioritizing naturalization applications, it totally could be possible. And what we want to point to is this administration, their own words and their own commitment to naturalization. In the early days of the Biden-Harris administration, they issued an executive order specifically calling out better processing of naturalization applications and, you know, talking about how important naturalization is. And so we really want them to live up to those words that they said in the early days of the administration and make this a priority. We think if it can be a priority, that that is a realistic timeline to get this done in the next six months.

NADWORNY: That was Kate Melloy Goettel. She is the legal director of litigation at the American Immigration Counsel. Kate, thank you so much for being with us.

Source: Immigrants are suing the U.S. government over delays in citizenship process

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