Canada’s immigration department is undergoing major changes

2023/10/04 Leave a comment

Good overview of the report and departmental plans. Of course, like all reorganizations, these take time before any benefits can be seen:

Last week, Canada’s immigration department implemented major changes that have been influenced by a recent study it commissioned.

The purpose of the changes is to improve the operations of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

Earlier this year, IRCC received a report from one of its previous Deputy Ministers, Neil Yeates, on how IRCC can become a more effective and efficient department. Yeates’ report was commissioned by IRCC to evaluate whether the department’s current structure best enables it to achieve its mandate. The Deputy Minister is the senior-most civil servant in a government department. Serving in a non-political role, they oversee the management of their department, including implementation of policies and strategies and managing people and budgets.

IRCC’s current Deputy Minister, Christiane Fox, corresponds with the department’s minister, who is a politician, and is currently Immigration Minister Marc Miller. The Immigration Minister’s role is to implement the elected mandate of the government.

Yeates: IRCC’s organizational model is broken

In his report, which CIC News has been able to obtain a copy of, Yeates concludes “the current organizational model at IRCC is broken but is being held together by the hard work and dedication of staff.”

He recommends “a series of steps need to be taken to realign the organizational structure (including a major shift to a business line-based structure), reform the governance system, implement stronger management systems (especially planning and reporting) and facilitate the development of a culture to better support the department’s goals and objectives (including consideration of an overall review of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and measures to better leverage the experience and expertise of diverse staff groups).”

Yeates explains there are numerous reasons why IRCC’s current model is broken, but highlights two that stand out in particular: a difficult operating environment in Canada and globally; and secondly, IRCC has grown exponentially since its current organizational structure was introduced over 20 years ago. To highlight this point, Yeates notes IRCC’s total workforce has grown from 5,352 employees in March 2023 to 12,949 employees as of January 2023.

Fox: IRCC “felt like crisis”

In an interview last week with journalist Paul Wells, Fox, stated the Yeates report will influence significant changes the department plans to pursue. Upon assuming her role at IRCC in July 2022, Fox explained to Wells the new job “felt like crisis” and that her colleagues at the department were under duress and exhausted. She concluded that departmental changes were necessary, and while she didn’t want to make them immediately, she also didn’t want to wait two years.

In June 2023, Fox had a plan of action after receiving the Yeates report and consulting with public stakeholders including IRCC applicants. Since then, she has been gradually rolling out the changes.

IRCC reorganized to business-line model

Among the changes is that last week, the department was re-organized across the following sectors:

  • Asylum and Refugees Resettlement
  • Citizenship and Passport
  • Chief Financial Officer
  • Chief Information Officer
  • Client Service, Innovation, and Chief Digital Officer
  • Communications
  • Corporate Services
  • Economic, Family, and Social Migration
  • International Affairs and Crisis Response
  • Migration Integrity
  • Service Delivery
  • Settlement Integration and Francophone Affairs
  • Strategic Policy

Fox explains that, as was recommended by Yeates, the department is now being organized across lines of business. What this means is IRCC employees will be divided across the various clients that the department services, as well as divided in a way to be response to changes around the world. For example, the department has a new International Affairs and Crisis Response sector, which Fox noted to Wells is meant to help IRCC better plan for humanitarian crises and shape a plan of action. IRCC routinely deal with these, such as with Ukraine since last year, and recent Afghanistan and Syrian refugee resettlement initiatives, just to name a few examples.

Fox also stresses the importance of IRCC taking more of a client focus moving forward whereby the department incorporates the experiences of its applicants more strongly into the decisions it makes.

IRCC’s operating environment

Yeates elaborates on the various forces impacting IRCC, the main ones being:

Hybrid Work Environment and COVID-19: The nature of work appears to be changing permanently due to the pandemic, and as such, more workers, including IRCC employees, are working remotely, with a general direction to return to the office 2-3 days per week. Yeates explains while work-from-home has been effective, it remains to be seen what the impacts will be on IRCC’s organizational culture.

Demand for IRCC Services: Demand for IRCC’s programs often exceeds the department’s processing capacity as measured by its service standards (the goals the department sets for itself to process applications for each line of business). Although IRCC has tools and resources at its disposal to manage its inventory, such as caps for certain programs, its inventories can grow very quickly whenever demand for its programs exceeds its processing capacity.

Growth of IRCC: As demand for IRCC’s program has grown, so too has its workforce. Yeates characterizes its workforce as “medium sized” in 2013, with 5,217 non-executive staff, which has more than doubled by 2023 to 12,721 staff. Executives at the department have grown from 135 employees in 2013 to 227 today. However, despite the program and staff growth, the organizational structure at IRCC, which was designed for a smaller department, has largely remained the same.

Immigration Policy Review: The dominant immigration narrative in Canada has not generally been challenged, and that the actual impact of immigration is not generally well documented. As such, an immigration policy review at IRCC may be beneficial in helping IRCC shape the department’s future direction.

Digital Transformation: IRCC has received significant funding for its Digital Platform Modernization, and such transformations are always challenging, particularly at a place like IRCC which has many significant responsibilities. However there is little doubt that IRCC needs to become a fully digital department.

Global Uncertainty: Global armed conflicts are on the rise, democracy is under threat, and factors such as climate change are impacting global demand to migrate, which will continue to have a significant impact on IRCC.

IRCC departmental culture is “committed”

While stressing the purpose of his report is not to be critical, Yeates observes IRCC currently has limited department-wide planning, lacks a multi-year strategic plan, and planning across the department is inconsistent, all of which pose a variety of challenges such as the inability to achieve the department’s goals and lack of accountability among staff.

IRCC staff described the departmental culture as “committed, collaborative, and supportive”, which has helped to overcome the department’s organizational structure, governance, and management systems shortcomings.

Moreover, Yeates pointed to a tension within the department between what he calls the “IRPA school” and the “client service school.” He observes that the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was introduced in 2001 with a framework to exclude applicants, with many reasons listed as to why an applicant may be denied. Immigration officers are trained to enforce IRPA, but little attention has historically been paid to the potential for these officers to have “unconscious bias” which may impact their decision-making.

On the other side are those who fall under the “client service school” and are willing to waive requirements and more open to compromise in order to improve the service that IRCC clients receive.

Highlights of Yeates’ recommendations

Overall, Yeates makes recommendations across four areas: Organizational Structure; Governance; Management Systems; and Culture. Highlights of the recommendations are as follows:

Organizational Structure Recommendations:

  • IRCC move to a business line organization
  • IRCC develop protocols for crisis and emergency management that identify Assistant Deputy Minister leads in various scenarios

Governance Recommendations:

  • The Executive Committee assume responsibility for finance and corporate services and absorb the functions of the Corporate Finance Committee
  • A new Operations Committee be established, chaired by the Deputy Minister’s Office, that will absorb the functions of the Issues Management Committee
  • That the membership of these committees be reconsidered as part of the re-organization process and that membership be no larger than 12
  • A review be conducted on the split of responsibilities between IRCC and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) under IRPA in order to rationalize and streamline roles and accountabilities

Management System Recommendations:

  • Deputy Minister lead a new planning and reporting regime
  • Develop a 3 to 5 year strategic plan
  • Undertake an annual planning cycle across all areas of the department, including HR, IT, Financial and Program plans
  • Implement a quarterly reporting regime
  • Ensure linkages with the department’s performance management work

Culture Recommendations:

  • Undertake a review of IRPA to determine whether amendments should be made to better support desired outcomes, including improved service delivery.
  • Review the training provided to staff involved in the administration of IRPA to ensure if reflects the desired philosophy and approach of the department.
  • Examine means to integrate the voices of IRCC’s diversity communities into the departmental governance regime

Source: Canada’s immigration department is undergoing major changes

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Barutciski: Roxham Road is closed. So why are asylum claims still on the rise?

2023/10/03 Leave a comment

Another example of the need to have more honest discussions on immigration and illustration of the conceit that Canada has a “managed immigration system”:

In March, Washington and Ottawa agreed to close Roxham Road, the small alley in Quebec through which thousands of asylum seekers have entered Canada from the United States, bypassing customs. Nearly 40,000 people entered Canada through Roxham Road in 2022; there were a record 91,710 claimants last year.

So despite the closing, why has Canada already processed more than 80,000 applications from asylum seekers so far this year?

Part of the answer, it appears, is that the international airports in Montreal and Toronto have become magnets for asylum claimants. According to Radio-Canada, immigration authorities quietly implemented a new policy to expedite temporary visa processing, including removing the need for proof that applicants will leave Canada at the end of their stay. This has reportedly made it easier for people who would normally have difficulty obtaining tourist visas to enter and then claim asylum upon arrival. This contrasts with decades-long policy characterized by restrictive visa rules and airline sanctions for travellers boarding with false documents.

Recently published statistics also show that immigration offices in Ontario and Quebec are receiving many inland claimants: migrants who entered Canada either legally or illegally, and then only afterward applied for asylum. This had already been happening when Roxham Road was open; in 2022, Canada received another 50,000 asylum claims from migrants who were already within the country. So far this year, the situation is similar.

The problem is that the government has not been forthcoming about these numbers or the policy that potentially led to them. There is no public data showing how many overstayed their visa-prescribed visits, or how many circumvented the recently tightened Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States. And this lack of transparency could leave Canadians to wonder if Ottawa is hiding that it has shifted to a relatively open-border approach.

Asylum seekers want to come to Canada because it is a rich country that offers unparalleled treatment, including generous benefits and almost-guaranteed citizenship for those granted protection; in many other regions, they often barely receive adequate food and shelter, and exist precariously at the whim of host governments. But interestingly, the influx of claimants in Canada is not necessarily related to global trends. Even though Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan are the top source countriesfor migrants in need of international protection, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board reports that our top source this year is Mexico; India is our fifth-highest source.

Unlike the U.S., Canada has not required visas for Mexicans since 2016, though we are well beyond the numbers that previously triggered the reimposition of visa requirements; Washington has asked Ottawa to reinstate them, to prevent entry to the U.S. from its northern border. And despite current diplomatic tensions with India, it has been our top source country for accepted permanent residents and temporary students – so it is odd that it is also a leading country of origin for asylum claimants.

Neither Mexico nor India is embroiled in political upheaval or armed conflict. So why are these among our top source countries?

A distinct vision of asylum policy appears to be emerging from the Trudeau Liberals: one that is generous, in allowing people from less privileged countries to enter Canada legally as a way of regularizing migration. The approach could also be seen as practical, in that it contributes to our demographic expansion by welcoming particularly determined individuals who would otherwise not be admitted under standard immigration streams. And it is politically attractive for humanitarian self-promotion.

But it remains to be seen whether an anxious public is ready to normalize yearly asylum claims that could number in the six digits. While reasonable people can disagree on the appropriate response to record numbers of asylum claims, a healthy liberal democracy will try to balance the basic dignity of asylum seekers and the legitimate interests of the host population. But it has become difficult in Canada to have honest discussions about our commitments. If the federal government is implementing policy changes on visa issuance, then it needs to be upfront about it, given the implications for resource planning, including at the provincial and municipal levels as well as among grassroots refugee organizations.

Canada’s immigration system has worked to date because it is highly controlled and focused on selecting migrants that advance the country’s needs. It is not intended to promote an ideological world view that believes there is global injustice resulting from a supposed birthright lottery that limits poor migrants from travelling freely. To maintain the country’s pro-immigration consensus in the real world, however, our leaders cannot view asylum in such a blue-sky way. But at the very minimum, they need to give us the information we need to have a real debate.

Michael Barutciski is a faculty member of York University’s Glendon College. He teaches law and policy with a focus on migration issues.

Source: Roxham Road is closed. So why are asylum claims still on the rise?

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Ottawa urged to clamp down further on immigration employment scam

2023/10/02 Leave a comment

Ottawa is being urged to crack down on an immigration scam where people hoping to find jobs in Canada are being forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars to potential employers – and a fee to immigration consultants – to find jobs here.

The federal Immigration Department last year altered regulations to try to put a stop to employers charging people fees for a job in Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which is designed to fill jobs where no Canadians or permanent residents are available for the role.

But immigration experts say that, despite the clampdown by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, some temporary foreign workers are still being exploited and made to pay large sums to secure a job in Canada.

The Globe and Mail has spoken to immigration consultants, lawyers and immigrants concerned about the scam where would-be immigrants pay to get a Canadian employer to apply for a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA), a document showing there is a need for a temporary foreign worker. Once an employer obtains the LMIA from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), the worker can apply for a work permit.

The Globe also found open discussions on social media, including by an immigration consultant, talking about people in India paying to obtain an LMIA job.

LMIAs are used to fill a wide variety of vacancies: unskilled jobs, including those in the catering, hospitality and retail sectors, as well as semi-skilled and skilled jobs.

The Immigration Department told The Globe and Mail it was aware of scams involving LMIA fraud, but had taken steps last year to guard against them with changes to regulations.

“Sectors identified as high risk for LMIA fraud receive an enhanced assessment to validate the employer’s business operations and the human resource needs,” the IRCC said in a statement.

Earl Blaney, a registered immigration consultant from London, Ont., said the demand for payment from migrants to get jobs in Canada was still “pervasive” and was also being used as a route to settling in Canada.

He said some foreign graduates who have studied in Canada but whose postgraduate work permits have run out are paying to stay in the country and get a semi-skilled LMIA job, such as a retail supervisor. Semi-skilled LMIA jobs confer 50 points toward obtaining permanent residence, he said.

Mr. Blaney said the temporary foreign workers program was set up to address labour-market shortages but has led to “profiteering” by some unscrupulous employers and immigration consultants who are splitting payments from immigrants.

“The market rate is about $50,000, but they are selling them [LMIAs] for higher,” he said. “This is staple if you are trying to get to Canada. It’s pervasive. It’s not just India, its everywhere. It’s illegal for immigration consultants or lawyers to charge for this. But crooked consultants will start the process and they don’t even know if it is going to be approved by ESDC. If it is approved, the $5,000-$7,000 fee goes up to $40,000 to $70,000 to $80,000.”

Last year, the federal government brought in changes to regulations to make sure temporary foreign workers are not charged for their own recruitment.

“To mitigate concerns about the financial exploitation of temporary foreign workers, employers must commit to not charge or recover from workers any fees related to recruitment,” the IRCC said in a statement. “Employers must also ensure that any third party who recruits temporary foreign workers on their behalf does not charge or recover such fees from the temporary foreign workers.”

The changes to the regulations also ensure temporary foreign workers get an employment contract on their first day of work. It must match the offer of employment, with the same wages and working conditions.

But one immigration lawyer, whom The Globe is not naming as he feared reprisals, said some who paid to get an LMIA job have arrived here from India to find they have no employment, or have to work long hours for virtually no pay.

He said employers or consultants and lawyers are continuing to ask migrants to pay approximately $60,000 to $70,000 to come to Canada for employment.

He said individuals are often willing to pay such a high amount because they would otherwise not qualify for immigration through other pathways in Canada. The majority of the money goes to the employers and around $10,000 to $20,000 is taken by the lawyer or consultant who files the application for the LMIA, he said.

Work permit holders are willing to pay so much, and often struggle with rampant abuse in the hope of becoming a permanent resident, the lawyer added.

The IRCC said all employers submitting an LMIA application are subject to “a genuineness assessment.”

“The Government of Canada takes its responsibility to protect the health and safety of temporary foreign workers, as well as the integrity of the Temporary Foreign Worker [TFW] Program, very seriously. We are aware of cases where people are scammed. We have taken concrete actions to ensure this doesn’t occur,” it said in a statement.

Earlier this year Ottawa launched an inquiry into a scam involving international students who faced deportation after being given bogus acceptance letters from colleges by consultants.

Source: Ottawa urged to clamp down further on immigration employment scam

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Sabrina Maddeaux: International students are lucrative assets — Marc Miller says so

2023/10/02 Leave a comment

Unfortunate choice of words that meets the standard definition of a political gaffe: telling the truth. However, she should at least acknowledge that the provinces are equally complicit, particularly Ontario as freezing fees and allowing private colleges encouraged much of the abuse;

As Canada’s population continues to explode in a clearly unsustainable — and unethical — fashion, the federal Liberals continue to insist there’s no problem. Typically, they do this moralistic backpatting under the guise of embracing diversity.

Except when the mask slips and they say the quiet part aloud, like when Immigration Minister Marc Miller called international students “an asset that is very lucrative” during question period last week.

The admission struck a vastly different chord than when he told CBC News last month that his chief concern was “the stigmatization of particularly people of diversity that come to this country to make it better.”

So, which is it? Are Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals chiefly concerned about the wellbeing of newcomers, or do they primarily view them as cash cows for post-secondary institutions and low-wage employers? Because right now, it can’t be both.

Statistics Canada recently reported Canada’s population grew by over a million people between July 2022 and July 2023, with nearly all the growth coming from immigration. Even more striking is the 46 per cent increase in temporary residents over the same time period.

Remember, these numbers are vastly undercounted — by around a million, according to some estimates. We won’t get more accurate numbers from Statistics Canada until sometime next month.

Canada has an increasingly poor reputation for the way those temporary residents are treated once here. Too often, they face exploitative work conditions, low wages and substandard living conditions, alongside scam artists and diploma mills looking to cash in on those who desire to live here permanently.

Miller was right when he said immigrants want to come to Canada and contribute to its betterment, but what was left unsaid is that we don’t seem to care much about their betterment as long as someone’s benefiting financially.

Just three weeks ago, a United Nations special rapporteur who specializes in modern slavery called our temporary foreign worker program a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” This was after a visit to Canada where he spoke to migrant workers who reported unsanitary living conditions, overtime with no pay, wage theft, no access to healthcare and fear of reporting abuse.

This week, the Senate concluded our temporary foreign worker program is “probably in need of a critical rethink” after studying the issue for months.

Meanwhile, the extent of the exploitation suffered by international students continues to be exposed. This week, another Senate report found foreign students were being misled, often intentionally by “education consultants” paid by Canadian colleges to recruit overseas, that studying in Canada will automatically lead to permanent residency.

Some of these “schools” — if they can be called that — don’t even have proper classrooms, instructors or class schedules, let alone accommodations or support services. Tuition is sky high and, while some students come from wealthy backgrounds, many more rely on their families taking out high-interest loans back home or re-mortgaging the family farm.

For these students, there’s more at risk than simply being unable to work in their chosen field or obtain permanent residency — their families have put everything on the line for what can be a cruel mirage of an opportunity.

This immense pressure, combined with Canada’s too-often disappointing reality and dismal living conditions, has contributed to a reported increase in suicides among international students. One funeral home told CBC News this spring that they used to repatriate no more than two student bodies to India per month, but that number has more than doubled in the last year.

It’s worth noting Canada doesn’t actually track the number of international student deaths, let alone suicides, within our borders. Perhaps it’s more convenient not to know.

International students are also increasingly falling victim to sexual exploitation as they struggle to afford rent and other necessary expenses.

Trudeau’s Liberals can’t wash their hands of responsibility by blaming a few bad actors and calling it another day on the Hill. These problems have worsened significantly since 2015 when they came into power with a determination to turbocharge immigration at any cost, with no plan for sustainability. This was no secret among those paying attention, although many in politics preferred to look away.

The recent Senate report also went so far as to say the federal government itself is “perpetuating an inflated sense of hope” by not being clear with prospective students about the actual process of obtaining permanent resident status when advertising the advantages of studying here.

Canada sells its immigration program as a vehicle for hope. In reality, it’s become loaded with human tragedy and tales of horror. It appears the Liberals are fine with that, as long as newcomers continue to be lucrative assets for the right stakeholders.

Source: Sabrina Maddeaux: International students are lucrative assets — Marc Miller says so

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C’est Québec qui cautionne la venue d’immigrants temporaires, dit Ottawa

2023/09/30 Leave a comment

More back and forth:

Le niveau record d’immigrants temporaires cette année est surtout causé, au Québec, par la permission accordée par le gouvernement Legault aux entreprises de recourir aux travailleurs étrangers, réplique le ministre fédéral Pablo Rodriguez.

« Les gens qui sont là, c’est parce qu’il y a des entreprises québécoises qui nous [les] ont demandés », a indiqué au Devoir le lieutenant québécois de Justin Trudeau, jeudi.

Il tenait à répondre à la ministre de l’Immigration du Québec, Christine Fréchette, qui a demandé la veille au gouvernement fédéral de revoir ses cibles d’immigration, peu après la publication par Statistique Canada de données témoignant de l’explosion du nombre de résidents non permanents au Canada et au Québec.

Le Parti québécois a récupéré le dossier, jeudi, en anticipant une « minorisation » de la langue française. Le député Pascal Bérubé a fait valoir que le Québec n’a pas une capacité d’accueil suffisante pour toute cette immigration temporaire. Le Parti libéral du Québec est d’accord, parlant de « drapeau rouge » pour la capacité d’accueil, alors que Québec solidaire demande au contraire qu’on régularise leur statut pour en faire des immigrants permanents.

Validée par Québec

Pablo Rodriguez, qui est devenu ministre fédéral des Transports cet été, rappelle que la venue de travailleurs étrangers temporaires est validée par le gouvernement provincial. Les statistiques montrent que ces travailleurs formaient 43 % des 470 976 résidents non permanents qui se trouvaient au Québec le 1er juillet 2023.

« Il n’y a pas un seul dossier qui est ouvert par Ottawa tant que le demandeur n’a pas reçu un certificat d’acceptation du Québec, dit-il. Ces gens-là qui sont là, il faut vraiment faire attention à ne pas pointer du doigt, [et] comprendre que s’ils sont là, c’est parce que ce sont des entreprises de chez nous qui les veulent. »

Interpellée jeudi, la ministre Fréchette a invité le gouvernement fédéral à « être plus sensible à l’impact de ses cibles d’immigration ». « La majorité des immigrants temporaires sont [au Québec] grâce à des programmes contrôlés entièrement par le fédéral », a-t-elle affirmé dans une déclaration écrite transmise au Devoir. « Le Québec contrôle seulement les travailleurs admis via le Programme des travailleurs étrangers temporaires et les étudiants étrangers », soit le tiers des immigrants non permanents accueillis en territoire québécois.

L’élue caquiste invite le fédéral à se concentrer sur les demandeurs d’asile, qui représentent 31 % des résidents non permanents québécois malgré la fermeture du chemin Roxham. « Le gouvernement canadien doit s’assurer d’une répartition équitable des demandeurs d’asile à travers le Canada, a-t-elle dit. Il y a un examen de conscience à faire à Ottawa. »

Le Québec ne dispose pas de cible pour l’accueil de travailleurs étrangers temporaires. Ces nouveaux arrivants font pourtant explicitement partie de la stratégie du gouvernement Legault publiée l’an dernier, qui prévoit d’« appuyer les employeurs » pour augmenter la main-d’oeuvre temporaire.

Près de 7000 entreprises au Québec ont demandé d’embaucher des travailleurs étrangers temporaires l’an dernier.

Les temporaires deviennent permanents

Les autres catégories d’immigrants temporaires comprennent les étudiants étrangers, qui sont convoités par Québec, les membres de la famille qui accompagnent ces immigrants ainsi que les demandeurs d’asile. Ces derniers forment 31 % de tous les résidents non permanents du Québec, et la province ne peut pas en gérer le nombre.

Selon le décompte de Statistique Canada, 146 723 demandeurs d’asile étaient présents sur le territoire québécois en juillet dernier.

Le gouvernement fédéral a pour objectif d’accueillir 500 000 immigrants par année au Canada. Or, un grand nombre d’entre eux sont déjà arrivés physiquement sur le territoire, comme par un programme d’immigration temporaire.

Les cibles d’immigration fixées par Québec sont moindres que son poids démographique dans le Canada, ce qui crée un goulot d’étranglement des demandes. Le Devoir a rapporté que des immigrants temporaires entrant dans certaines catégories pourraient devoir attendre plus de 25 ans avant d’obtenir leur résidence permanente.

Source: C’est Québec qui cautionne la venue d’immigrants temporaires, dit Ottawa

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McGill, Concordia unlikely to be hampered by new [language] immigration rules: minister

2023/09/30 Leave a comment

More likely than unlikely:

The immigration minister does not believe universities like McGill and Concordia will be hampered in their recruitment efforts owing to new rules imposing more French on international students.

Christine Fréchette said university recruitment was not hampered in the previous incarnation of the Quebec Experience Program (PEQ),which international students use to enter Quebec combining school with career aims. In 2019, the government slapped limits on the range of disciplines eligible, sparking an uproar from students that forced it to back down.

And on Thursday, Fréchette said she does not believe another new set of rules, this time imposing more French on PEQ candidates, will do what the universities predict.

“For me this argument is not backed up by the numbers,” Fréchette said answering a question from the Montreal Gazette. “I think that McGill has an attraction, an appeal that is worldwide.

“They will be able to attract international students even though we have changed the rules of the PEQ diplomé.”

Last week, both McGill University and Concordia University slammed Fréchette’s new rules, which are part of a massive reform of Quebec’s immigration system.

In two separate briefs presented to the legislature committee studying the reforms, they said the new French language requirements included in the new PEQ will mean international students will be deterred from applying, thus depriving Quebec of their skills and talent.

The PEQ welcomes a wide range of academic options and is hugely popular, but in May Fréchette announced changes to the way the program works. In an effort to increase the French skill level of applicants — in the same way as her overall immigration reforms in the economic category, which Quebec controls — Fréchette introduced a distinction between francophone and anglophone applicants.

Foreign students who studied in French or are francophone will benefit from a fast-tracked system designed to retain them. Instead of the 12 to 18 months of work experience currently required to apply for a certificate leading to permanent residency, a request can be made as soon as they complete their studies.

But students who come to Quebec to study in English and do not have a sufficient knowledge of French will no longer qualify for the PEQ and the advantages it offers.

McGill argues the rules will create a two-tier system because most of its 12,000 foreign students will not meet the new qualifications.

“Our students risk emerging as the losers in this exercise,” Fabrice Labeau, McGill’s deputy provost of student life and learning, told the committee.

Concordia has a similar view and says the reforms will “de facto” exclude graduates from anglophone universities even if they master French.

The PEQ, or Programme de l’expérience québécoise, is a fast track for international students — some of whom may already be living and working in the province — to obtain a Quebec selection certificate, which is a step toward permanent residency.

International students can apply to the program, as can new arrivals who have obtained a degree at a Quebec institution in the last two years.

Source: McGill, Concordia unlikely to be hampered by new immigration rules: minister – Montreal Gazette

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Lederman: In Poland, an outrage over a movie shows the government’s fear of both fact and fiction

2023/09/30 Leave a comment

Of note:

“Only pigs sit in the cinema.” That phrase was coined during the Second World War by the Polish Home Army to discourage people from seeing Nazi propaganda films screening in German-occupied Poland.

But the resistance slogan is getting new life in today’s politically charged Poland, as controversy swirls over the feature film The Green Border, which has caused the far-right Law and Justice (PiS) government to lash out and compare the movie to, yes, “Nazi propaganda.” The outrage prompted 74-year-old director Agnieszka Holland to hire security as she travelled to Poland for the movie’s release.

The Green Border, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, is a harrowing look at Poland’s real-life migrant crisis. It is set largely along the natural, forested border, where refugees from the Middle East and Africa have been trying to enter the European Union through Poland. They are lured there by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, whose government has offered the false promise of safe passage – a political strategy meant to antagonize the EU.

In the film, a group of desperate people, including a woman from Afghanistan and a family of Syrian refugees – three children, their parents and grandfather – fly to Minsk, and are shuttled from the airport to the barbed-wire border in the thick forest. There, they try to cross into Poland. Rather than being welcomed, they are forced into a terrible cross-border cat-and-mouse game while navigating the cold, swampy forest. Sadistic guards on both sides – and in the no man’s land in the middle – behave cruelly to these desperate people, including pregnant women, who are trying to escape homeland threats such as war and severe oppression. The human rights abuses they encounter as they try to claim asylum in Poland are in violation of international law.

The “only pigs” line was recently resurrected by Polish border guards who saw the film, and repeated by President Andrzej Duda, who has not. He made the ugly comment during a TV appearance, and called for an audience boycott, in objection to the film’s depiction of the country’s actions at the border.

With a runtime of more than two hours, the devastating black-and-white film – which is at the Vancouver International Film Festival this weekend, following screenings at TIFF – is excruciating to watch. But it is essential.

While heavily researched, this is not a documentary; it is a dramatization, with fictional characters. That doesn’t make it untrue.

A Polish journalist I recently met in Poland, Joanna Lopat-Reno, has documented the crisis – one where people “are repeatedly pushed around, intimidated, beaten, starved, whole families waiting in the forest,” she wrote in her European Press Prize-nominated article, “Ammar in the Polish wardrobe: A story about hiding refugees on the Polish-Belarusian border.” She is anxious to call attention to the issue. “That … fictional story is not very different from what happens in reality. Now. Because it is still happening.”

But on the day The Green Border opened in Poland, Deputy Prime Minister and PiS party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski held a news conference where he called the film “simply shameful, repulsive and disgusting.” Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro compared Ms. Holland to a Nazi propagandist. Ms. Holland’s father was Jewish, and his parents died in the Holocaust.

The government even produced its own short film warning viewers about the “untruths and distortions” of the feature, and ordered cinemas to play it ahead of screenings.

This is all happening in the run-up to Poland’s Oct. 15 election, in which the refugee crisis has been an issue. The PiS campaign is pushing its anti-immigration policies as it tries to win a third term. It is also asking this referendum question: “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa?”

Ms. Holland has said the film’s release was not timed to coincide with the election, but with film festival season. She calls the government’s attacks on the film “an organized hate campaign.” 

In spite of the controversy – or perhaps because of it – The Green Borderhad the biggest opening weekend for a Polish film this year. Yet despite the film’s critical reception, Poland’s Oscar committee announced on Monday that it submitted a different entry to the Academy Awards for consideration in the international-feature category: the much prettier period film, The Peasants, which is easier on the eyes, and heart – and easier for the current government to stomach.

Art can bring attention to issues that are being largely ignored, and call attention to governments that are acting egregiously.

Will this film bring change? Impossible to know. But it will make you care. We need to pay attention to these people – and the lawmakers who hope to silence them.

Source: In Poland, an outrage over a movie shows the government’s fear of both fact and fiction

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

Downe: All foreign students need security checks

2023/09/29 Leave a comment

New to me as an issue but given the large numbers, not unexpected even if a very small percentage of international students:

The continuing lack of security checks for all international students is putting Canadians at risk.

The recent disclosure by the federal immigration minister that 700 foreign students are facing deportation following the discovery that forged acceptance letters from educational institutions were used to enter the country raises questions about how carefully—if at all—these students are vetted before coming to Canada. This concerning situation is made worse given the fake enrolment scam came to light after a public tip rather than a government investigation.

A number of these suspicious students have been identified by the Canada Border Services Agency as not attending university or college, but involved in criminal gangs. Since at least 2018, the Canadian government has been aware that student visas were being used to move gang members into Canada.

In 2022, more than 800,000 international students came to Canada: an increase of almost a third in one year. In addition to recognized universities and colleges, there has been a surge of new colleges and schools that seem to exist to take advantage of our weak admission rules for foreign students. This rapid and free-wheeling admittance can have real life impacts on Canadians. 

As reported in my hometown newspaper, The Guardian, at 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2021, a young woman walked into a Staples store in Charlottetown, P.E.I., and spoke to an employee about buying a desk. After a discussion, she walked away and continued shopping in another aisle. She was followed by the employee and sexually assaulted. The employee was in Canada under a study permit issued by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. 

In this case, the foreign student pleaded guilty and received a conditional discharge rather than a criminal conviction. Thus, he would not have to leave Canada before completing his studies at the University of Prince Edward Island.

Since this was not the first case involving someone on a study permit who committed a sexual assault but who didn’t receive a criminal conviction, citizens are wondering if the threat of deportation and having to leave their studies is being used as a “get-out-of-jail-free card” for students from abroad.

According to media reports, the woman has paid a high price for the sexual assault. She has quit her job, suffers panic attacks, and is fearful of being in stores and near strangers, while the international student gets to finish his degree.

The question is: why is it not mandatory that all applicants for study permits be required to pass a criminal background check prior to the student visa being issued? Are we really only relying on the honour system to ensure criminals aren’t slipping through the cracks, or the gut instincts of immigration officers to follow up with individual applicants?

Obviously, the vast majority of international students coming to Canada are not committing offences. Indeed, they are contributing to the diversity and success of our country, but we must ensure that both Canadians and newcomers are protected by implementing and maintaining proper checks before these students come to Canada.

Foreign nationals who committed crimes should be deported, and our court system—particularly our judges—need to be aware that security checks are not done on most of the students before they come to Canada.

The deportation issue is obviously a problem for some of our judges, as it is an additional penalty in that a criminal conviction may result in removal, but the safety of Canadians and those who abide by Canadian law during their temporary stay here should be the priority.

As the federal minister responsible for immigration recently stated: “In general, applicants for a study permit are not required to provide a police certificate as part of their application. Applicants should check country-specific requirements for more information. Nonetheless, if the immigration officer processing the application deems it necessary when reviewing a prospective student’s application, they will ask the applicant for a police certificate.”

Evidently, the process outlined by the minister highlights massive security gaps in the present system that is neither working to protect Canadian citizens, nor for the legitimate international students who come here to study.

Percy Downe is a Senator from Charlottetown, P.E.I.

Source: All foreign students need security checks

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Disputed immigration provision requires link to national security, Supreme Court says

2023/09/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

A provision of federal immigration law can be used to bar people on security grounds for engaging in violence only when there is a clear connection to national security, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

The decision came Wednesday in a judgment on two cases that began with administrative rulings under a section of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The section of the law says permanent residents or foreign nationals are inadmissible on security grounds for engaging in acts of violence that could endanger the lives or safety of people in Canada.

The first case involved Earl Mason, a citizen of Saint Lucia, who came to Canada in 2010 and later applied for permanent residence with his wife’s sponsorship. In May 2014, Mason was charged with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of discharging a firearm after an argument at a bar in Surrey, B.C. The charges were stayed due to delay.

In the second case, Libyan citizen Seifeslam Dleiow arrived in Canada in 2012 on a study permit and later unsuccessfully applied for refugee status. A Canada Border Services Agency report alleged he had engaged in acts of violence against intimate partners and others.

Some charges were stayed, and he received a conditional discharge after pleading guilty to being unlawfully in a dwelling house with intent to commit an indictable offence, mischief under $5,000 and uttering threats.

In Mason’s case, the Immigration Appeal Division agreed with the immigration minister that the section of the immigration law in question applies even when there is no nexus with national security. In Dleiow’s case, the Immigration Division followed the appeal division’s interpretation.

As a result of these administrative rulings, both men were deemed inadmissible to Canada.

The Federal Court quashed the rulings, but the Federal Court of Appeal concluded the administrative interpretation of the immigration provision was reasonable. The men then took their cases to the Supreme Court.

In its decision, the top court rejected the Immigration Appeal Division’s reading of the provision and overturned the administrative rulings.

In writing for the majority, Justice Mahmud Jamal said the relevant legal constraints “point overwhelmingly to a single reasonable interpretation” of the immigration provision — a person can be found inadmissible to Canada only if they engage in acts of violence with a nexus to national security.

Jamal said the Immigration Appeal Division failed to address critical points of statutory context that Mason had raised as well as “the potentially broad consequences of its interpretation,” namely deportation from Canada.

In addition, he wrote, the appeal division failed to apply the section in keeping with international human rights obligations concerning refugees to which Canada is a signatory.

Justice Suzanne Cote would have applied a different legal standard of review to the case, but agreed that there must be a link between the relevant act of violence and national security.

She found the Immigration Appeal Division’s interpretation would have significantly expanded the grounds for deportation of foreign nationals or permanent residents.

“It would allow foreign nationals to be returned to countries where they may face persecution, in a manner contrary to Canada’s obligations under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.”

Source: Immigration law provision can bar people with link to national … – CTV News

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Canada’s population sees biggest one-year increase on record, StatCan reports

2023/09/29 Leave a comment

Quoted on need for annual levels plan to include temporary residents and political will to curb growth:

Canada’s population is growing at its fastest pace since the distant days of the baby boom.

According to the latest Statistics Canada report, the population last year grew by more than a million — a 2.9 per cent rate, the highest since the late 1950s and one that outstrips, by a wide margin, every other G7 country.

At that rate, observed StatCan’s Patrick Charbonneau, the population, now at slightly over 40 million, would double in just 25 years.

The question those figures and that projection raise is this: Is Canada — famously in the midst of both a housing crisis and a health-care crisis — ready to deal with that many more people?

The growth — 98 per cent of it — has been driven by immigration, both permanent and temporary, and particularly by the numbers of non-permanent residents coming to Canada. Those include refugees, temporary foreign workers and international students.

In 2022-23, Canada took in some 1.13 million immigrants, the highest such figure on record, and almost half a million more than the previous year. Over the same period, the number of non-permanent residents increased by 697,701.

As of June 2023, the number of non-permanent residents stood at nearly 2.2 million, about 5.5 per cent of Canada’s population.

“Temporary immigration has surpassed permanent immigration for the first time last year in a context where permanent immigration was already close to a record high,” said Charbonneau.

Andrew Griffith, a former director general at the federal Immigration Department, said Ottawa has a well-managed immigration system of permanent residents, but the exponential growth of the temporary resident admission has made the population growth unsustainable.

Ottawa has an annual plan that sets admission targets for different classes of permanent resident, but the entry of temporary residents is uncapped.

“We have to have an integrated immigration plan that actually looks at both the permanent residents and the temporary residents, given that the temporary residence is largely uncontrolled and has been increasing at a very high rate,” Griffith said.

“If you look at its explosive growth over the past few years, the past 20 years, that obviously contributes to all the pressures on housing, health care, infrastructure and the like.”

He said the government’s immigration plan is developed in silos and doesn’t address infrastructure capacity issues when it comes to health care, housing, education and transportation.

Although public sentiment still largely favours the continued immigration boost and its economic and workforce benefits, many regions are already struggling to manage housing and health-care shortages.

Across Canada, rising prices and limited supply create difficulties for those seeking home rental and ownership. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said in a Sept. 13 report that Canada needs 3.5 million more units, on top of those already being built, to restore affordability. Sixty per cent of the demand for housing is in Ontario and B.C., largely due to supply lagging behind demand for 20 years.

On the health side, about six million people across Canada lack access to a family doctor, according to Canadian Medical Association data. Of those who have a family doctor, about a third experience overly long wait times to access them.

It’s a system already under strain, with doctors and nurses increasingly reporting stress and burnout, and some quitting.

An increasing population doesn’t necessarily dictate a health-care calamity, said Ruth Lavergne, a Canada Research Chair in Primary Care at Dalhousie University.

But she said the segment of the population supporting and working in health care needs to grow proportionately to the population. And we need to “rethink the organization of health care, to make it more efficient and better use the capacity that we have.”

Some of that capacity exists within the ranks of the newcomers, in the guise of foreign-trained health professionals. The problem is Canada doesn’t have a great record in helping them work here.

But streamlining the credentialing process can’t be the only fix, said Canadian Medical Association president Kathleen Ross.

She said the country will have to reconsider health-care delivery.

And that, to her mind, means reconsidering who’s doing what, where and when in the health system, and how to plug gaps without opening up new ones.

It also means changing how primary care works, reducing the administrative burdens on health professionals and better retaining them.

“We’re in a really unique time. Our emergency rooms, which are sort of the backstop, if you will, for a primary care system that’s not functioning well, are already over capacity and struggling with closures relating to our human health resource challenges.”

“These are all things we need to take into consideration, whether or not our population increases by a half a million or one-and-a-half million this year. It still behooves us to get back to the big discussion about how we are going to deliver access to care for all residents in Canada, whether they’re temporary or permanent.”

On the housing shortage side, the responsibility falls on provincial and federal governments to ensure Canada can withstand rising demand, said John Pasalis, president of Toronto brokerage Realosophy Realty. Over the past decade, he feels that has broken down as governments failed to scale investments in vital services in line with population growth.

Although immigrants often feel the brunt of the blame for these pressures, Pasalis said culpability lies with leaders who set ambitious immigration targets and allow universities to accept significant numbers of international students without investing in upgrading capacity.

“The people who are moving here are the ones that are kind of paying the biggest price in many, many cases.”

If governments don’t step up, all Canadians will eventually feel the squeeze, said Mike Moffatt, assistant professor in business and economics at Western University.

“We certainly either need to increase the amount of infrastructure built and housing built or slow down population growth,” Moffatt said. “If we continue to have this disconnect, we’re just going to have more housing shortages, less affordability and more homelessness.”

Instead of looking at newcomers as the source of housing strain, Moffatt says leaders should impose stronger restrictions on investors taking advantage of scarcity to drive up prices.

But it’s not just the supply of houses; it’s the type of supply. Those stronger regulations will need to be aimed at developers, too, said Marc Lee, a senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The housing in highest demand — for low- and middle-income families — is not as profitable to build.

David Hulchanski, a University of Toronto professor of housing and community development, noted that Airbnb has also taken up available housing across the country, something he said could be curbed through stronger regulation.

“There’s this effort to blame our housing problem on an increase in population,” said Hulchanski. “It isn’t just supply, it’s the type of supply.”

Against this backdrop, Immigration Minister Marc Miller has talked about the need to rein in admissions of international students — around 900,000 this year — by developing a “trusted system” to enhance the integrity of the international student program.

Griffith said that’s not enough — Canada needs to impose a hard cap, though that will take a strong political nerve.

“The business sector will squawk about the fewer temporary workers. Education institutions will go bankrupt if they don’t have their international students. The provincial governments will get in the way because they have to actually pay for university (education) rather than allowing the universities to be subsidized by foreign students.”

Shutting down the international student program and the temporary foreign worker program, or making major reductions to those programs, seems unlikely, he said, but freezing at current levels and gradually reducing those numbers might be viable.

“It would be very contentious,” he said. “It boils down to a lot of political will.”

Source: Canada’s population sees biggest one-year increase on record, StatCan reports

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