Immigration law change leaves some newcomers struggling to prove that their marriages are genuine

2022/08/30 Leave a comment

Some good data on overall numbers as well as the explaining the impact of the change made under the Conservative government requiring both conditions “nongenuine marriage “and” entered into for immigration purposes” to be met to only one condition, changing the “and” to “or:”

Deeparani Harishkumar Dhaliwal says she ends up emotionally and financially drained every time she travels to India to visit her husband and their young son.

Sometimes she stays for two months, other times for as long as six. But she ends up having to find a new job and a new apartment each time she returns alone to Canada.

Due to her frequent trips and moves, Dhaliwal, 37, has very few belongings. The Mississauga woman has been making these journeys for a decade, since she went back to India for an arranged marriage in 2011.

It’s not her preferred lifestyle, she says. But her spousal sponsorship to let her husband join her in Canada has been refused four times on the ground that it’s not a genuine marriage.

Her appeals to a tribunal have been denied, most recently in June, and so have her appeals of those appeal decisions.

“I cannot give up. I need a good future for my child. I need a good future for my family that they can’t have in India,” said Dhaliwal, who took their Canadian-born son Sehajveer to the care of her in-laws and husband in India, due to her lack of child-care options here, when he was two months old. She only recently brought him back to Canada at age eight.

Family reunification has long been considered an important reason to let spouses come to Canada. However, some newcomers such as Dhaliwal face years of bureaucracy, culturally loaded questions about marriage and a subjective evaluation process, with their families’ future at stake.

“Bringing a child into this world is not a small thing. This is not for immigration purposes.”

Between 2016 and 2021, there were 410,546 Canadians who applied to sponsor their foreign spouses for permanent residence, including spouses already in Canada and those still abroad. Over the same period, 368,332 were approved and 27,826 were refused, a refusal rate of seven per cent. (Delays in processing account for the mathematical discrepancy.)

The top grounds for refusals were: the relationship was deemed not genuine; the spouse was inadmissible for different reasons; or the couple failed to meet cohabitation requirements, produce required documents or answer questions truthfully.

As of mid-August, the federal immigration department still has 62,772 pending spousal sponsorship applications in process, including 2,487 cases where applicants have been refused before.

“The Government of Canada recognizes that the majority of relationships are genuine and that most applications are made in good faith,” says immigration department spokesperson Rémi Larivière. “To protect the integrity of our immigration system, officers must do their due diligence to determine whether a marriage is genuine.”

Couples are often interviewed to have their credibility assessed by immigration officials, and failed applicants can appeal to the Immigration and Refugee Board, where an independent adjudicator reviews the decisions. Between 2016 and 2021, the tribunal heard 7,702 spousal sponsorship appeals.

Included in those were Dhaliwal’s efforts to sponsor her husband, Amandeep Singh Dhaliwal, 33, to Canada.

In 2010, Dhaliwal came as a permanent resident with her then-husband but the two separated the following year, she told immigration officials, due to his alleged abusive behaviour. Shortly after the separation (they’re now divorced), she met her current husband and sponsored him in 2012.

The first sponsorship was refused because her divorce in India wasn’t recognized under Canadian law so the new marriage was considered invalid.

“A person must prove that their relationship is genuine and was not entered into primarily for the purpose of acquiring any status or privilege,” said Larivière.

“She reapplied three times after that. Each time, the officer was not satisfied that the marriage was not entered into for the purpose of acquiring any status or privilege under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.”

Dhaliwal said she has been financially supporting her husband, who runs a small family farm. To pay for all the legal fees and trips, she said she has sold the gold necklace, bangle and earrings that her late mother bequeathed to her.

With her son by her side now, she is now studying to become a personal support worker while working as a security guard at Toronto’s Pearson airport. She still likes to hope that her husband could join them in Canada soon and they could buy a house and build a home here.

“We are standing by each other for a lifetime no matter what the conditions are, no matter what the (sponsorship) results are,” said Dhaliwal, who had a miscarriage earlier this year that she attributed to the stress from her legal battle.

“We have to stay in Canada because this is the only country where I can support my family and raise my child for a better future.”

The couple said it’s awfully hard to stay apart whenever Dhaliwal had to return to the cruel reality of being alone in Canada whenever she left India, where people make fun of them and taunt them about their marriage.

“Whenever we see relatives, people ask the same question. You guys have a kid together and it’s been so many years, and you still don’t have visa. It’s hard to answer people and explain to them our bond,” Amandeep Singh Dhaliwal, 33, said from India.

“In my life, my wife is God’s blessing. I am very hard working but due to limited opportunity in India, I couldn’t help her financially and most of burden of family is on her.”

While Dhaliwal made the mistake of not getting her divorce in India notarized before her first sponsorship, the second application, filed in 2014, was rejected due to doubts about the genuineness of the marriage.

The appeal tribunal concurred with the concerns raised by immigration officials, citing:

  • The couple’s compatibility in terms of age, education, marital and religious backgrounds (She is Hindu, 37, divorced and university educated; he is Sikh, 34, a high-school dropout, and it’s his first marriage);
  • The difficulty both spouses had in detailing their first conversation and the attraction they shared that led to their quick marriage a month after they met;
  • Inconsistency in their evidence with regards to their wedding, honeymoon and intimacy; and
  • Concerns that Dhaliwal’s first marriage was also a marriage of convenience.

Immigration consultant Sol Gombinsky, who is advising the couple, says spousal applicants are judged through the Canadian lens and that applicants are often stumped by the questions raised by immigration officers at interviews.

One question posed to the couple at their immigration interview was about their first sexual encounter after the marriage.

“It has always bothered me that they ask somebody abroad questions (from) thousands of miles away, with a different culture, different religion, and they ask questions that in many cultures are difficult to answer,” said Gombinsky, who worked 30 years with the immigration department, including a stint as an appeals officer.

“When something starts off bad and you get off on the wrong foot, it’s very difficult to correct it.”

In refusing the first appeal, the appeal tribunal said a variety of factors are taken into account in assessing if a relationship is genuine: the intent of the marriage; length of the relationship; amount of time spent together; conduct at the time of meeting, engagement and wedding; knowledge of each other’s relationship history; level of continuing contact and communication; financial support; sharing of child care responsibility; and knowledge about each other’s extended families and lives.

“The preponderance of the evidence support a finding that the marriage was entered into primarily for the applicant’s immigration to Canada, and is not genuine,” a tribunal concluded in 2016 in this case.

Seasoned immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman says what makes it hard to reverse a refusal in a case such as Dhaliwal’s is an amendment of the law by the former federal Conservative government.

The old regulation let officials refuse a spousal application if it was a nongenuine marriage “and” it was entered into for immigration purposes.

“But now you can refuse a sponsorship because it was entered into for immigration purposes or it’s not genuine,” explained Waldman, who represented Dhaliwal and her husband at their latest appeal this year.

“Since the change … if the case is refused at the beginning, then it’s really difficult to overcome, because that’s a finding that was made based upon what happened at the time they were married. Changes that occur afterwards don’t affect that part of the (initial) decision.”

As a result, many genuine couples have also been trapped if they fail to present their cases properly the first time, Waldman said.

Dhaliwal’s third and fourth sponsorship applications were refused in 2017 and 2021, on the same grounds. In the subsequent appeals, the appeal tribunal ruled that the same issue had been decided previously, and dismissed the requests.

Despite a DNA test result confirming the paternity of Dhaliwal’s child, the second appeal panel noted 22 specific problems with the couple’s evidence at the 2016 hearing and determined that none of the new evidence addressed those findings.

“While the new evidence might be relevant vis-à-vis whether the marriage is now genuine, it was not directly probative of whether the marriage had been entered into primarily for immigration purposes,” cited the latest appeal decision released in June.

In that decision, the tribunal recognized there’s a child of the marriage and the child continues to be jointly raised by the couple, which addressed some of the concerns previously raised.

“However, it is clearly not probative of them all,” said the tribunal.

Citing case law, the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) tribunal said the existence of a child of the marriage will favour a finding of genuineness, but it is not proof in itself.

“In this appeal, it has already been held that, despite the existence of a child, the Appellant did not establish that this is a genuine marriage or that it was not entered into primarily for immigration purposes,” said the Immigration Appeal Division.

“If it is a fraudulent immigration marriage — and the Appellant has failed to establish otherwise before the IAD and visa officers — I cannot say that the child’s best interests favour holding another IAD hearing on the matter,” wrote adjudicator Benjamin R. Dolin in his June 23, 2022 decision.

While it’s not impossible to have a child in order to facilitate immigration through a spousal sponsorship, Waldman said he has never come across such a case in his more than four decades of legal practice.

“I’ve seen quite a few other cases like this. It’s really a tragic situation because families are being separated unnecessarily. Children are growing up with only one parent and people are not able to be with their spouses,” he said.

“For a lot of people, it’s not going to be possible to go back to their country. It’s not an option for a lot of people either because the financial situation in the country is extremely difficult.”

Source: Immigration law change leaves some newcomers struggling to prove that their marriages are genuine

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Channel crossings to the UK top 25,000 so far this year

2022/08/30 Leave a comment

By way of comparison, about 20,000 irregular arrivals at Roxham Road between January and July 2022 (virtually all), compared to close to 2 million at the US Southwest land border:

More than 25,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Channel to the UK so far this year, government figures show.

A total of 915 people were detected on Saturday in 19 small boats, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, taking the provisional total for the year to 25,146.

There have been 8,747 crossings in August so far, including 3,733 in the past week, analysis shows.

The highest daily total on record came last Monday, 22 August, with 1,295 people crossing in 27 boats.

It has been more than four months since the home secretary, Priti Patel, unveiled plans to send refugees to Rwanda to try to deter people from crossing the Channel. Since then, 19,878 people have arrived in the UK after making the journey.

Source: Channel crossings to the UK top 25,000 so far this year

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How VR and AI could revolutionize language training for newcomers

2022/08/27 Leave a comment

Innovative:

Adla Hitou is shamelessly showcasing her stellar work experience as she tries to convince the interviewer to hire her.

The Syrian newcomer answers every question that’s tossed her way.

“Give me that $3-trillion job,” she says, before bursting into laughter.

The assertive and fun-loving Hitou undertaking this mock job interview in virtual reality seems like an entirely different person from the timid mother of two who normally only whispers to others in her real-world classroom.

“I don’t feel nervous speaking in English in the virtual world because I just disappear. When I talk, I’m not afraid to make mistakes anymore. I just feel more confident,” says the 51-year-old Mississaugan, a former pharmacist who resettled in Canada in 2018 via Lebanon.

Alexander called the project’s use of VR in language learning “groundbreaking,” adding the technology appears to help participants overcome the self-consciousness in communicating in their second language.

“At this point, VR is a great equalizer. When students are using VR, they seem to feel this freedom to want to be able to speak. I think part of it is, when they’re in the VR world of it, they’re less concerned about themselves and about making mistakes, where they are actually being represented by a cartoon character.”

On this sweltering Saturday, instructor Anthony Faulkner and volunteers prepared the four female and three male adult learners on how to tackle questions at a job interview.

At first glance, there’s nothing atypical about the drill, a part of the English as a Second Language curriculum to help adult immigrants learn the language for their successful integration in their adopted country.

They talked about how to make a formal introduction of themselves, highlight their accomplishments and think on their feet when faced with the unexpected.

Sitting in a circle in the lab, Hitou — in a soft and gentle voice — told classmates in the physical world about her training as a pharmacist, her work experience as a project manager with the World Health Organization’s food and vaccination programs in Syria, and the civil war that forced her exile.

“I’m good at communication. I can take your ideas, relate the information and make a good presentation,” she said, adding personal details: “I love volunteering and do handcraft. I’ve made crochets and sold them at bazaars to raise money for charities. I am a bad seller but I have a kind heart.”

After the in-class session, with help of a team of volunteers, the participants were invited to put on their headsets, lift the hand-held controllers and enter Faulkner’s virtual office resembling an executive suite — wood panelling, rows of bookshelves and a bronze chandelier.

In an instant, Hitou, in her white hijab and blue one-piece dress, transformed into an avatar in the virtual world, revealing her long silver hair and sporting a black business suit.

“How do you deal with failures and mistakes?” asked Faulkner, standing in the middle of the classroom and moving his hand-held controllers in the air to make his avatar do a “hands-open, palms-up” gesture.

Caught by the surprise question, Hitou, behind her headset and facing a whiteboard in the physical world, confidently replied: “We are all humans. We have to learn from our mistakes and understand why we made the mistakes and failed. I do not give up.”

“This is so much more fun than learning English from books and notes in the traditional classroom,” she said later. “Now, I remember every word and thing that I see and learn in the virtual world when I go back to the real world.”

The virtual job interview is just one of many thematic VR experiences covered over the eight-week course by the research team that developed the customized scenarios with help from ENGAGE, a virtual platform that simulates the way people interact in the physical world for multi-user events, collaboration, training and education. One scene includes a dinner party at a virtual highrise loft; another involves the planning of a Canadian road trip where each newcomer is assigned to research a part of the country before going to the different booths in a virtual conference hall to make a presentation to their peers about these places and activities.

Instead of just viewing some Canadian landmarks on television as peers in a regular class might, the VR participants can take virtual tours of Niagara Falls, Toronto’s Eaton Centre and St. Lawrence Market through the VR 360 videos on YouTube VR.

Oakville’s Manar Mustafa, a computer engineer who fled war in Syria and came here in 2016, said she attended a regular English program at a newcomer settlement service agency but nothing can compare to VR learning.

“This is a perfect experience. I never used VR but everything feels so real in the VR world. I have not visited the Niagara Falls but now I have. It was right in front of me in the classroom and I didn’t even get wet,” the 36-year-old mother of four said with a chuckle.

“Initially, I felt dizzy (with motion sickness), but now I really love it. I feel very comfortable with it.” 

Her classmate, Afghan journalist Abdul Mujib Ebrahimi, who only arrived in Canada last November, said he hopes to quickly translate what he has learned from the virtual world to the real world.

“The VR experience pushes you in a real situation. You are a character and you use your imagination to communicate with others. If I don’t know a word or how to say something, I just explain it in a different way for people to understand me,” said the 27-year-old from Badakhshan. 

“I’m still trying to learn English and work with English, but I am more confident when I talk to real people.” 

Alexander cautions that it’s too early to determine the effectiveness of VR in language learning.

“We have to be careful of the novelty effect of VR. Our students are enjoying the experience maybe because they’re trying VR for the first time and they can tell their friends and family about it,” he explained.

The VR class this summer is part of a series of projects that also include participants in traditional classrooms and artificial-intelligence-assisted learning in front of a computer. The AI session will be launched in winter.

There are about 80 newcomers waiting to get in the program, according to Marwa Khobieh, executive director of the Syrian Canadian Foundation, which has been running a joint English tutoring program for newcomers with volunteers from U of T since 2017.

She concedes that VR language learning is expensive, with the required infrastructure and equipment in its infancy, but if it succeeds, there’s a huge potential to use it to accelerate the learning and ultimately the integration of new immigrants.

“If we’re able to help newcomers learn and improve their language skills in two years instead of four, it’s worth the investment,” noted Khobieh. “Technology is our future and this can change the future of language training for newcomers.”

Source: How VR and AI could revolutionize language training for newcomers

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International students waiting for visas from Ottawa at risk of missing start of classes

2022/08/27 Leave a comment

An unfortunate additional example at IRCC. Given this and other examples, perhaps time for the government to scale back to program capacity, rather than failing to meet service standards and expectations:

Delays in processing student visas have put a large number of international students at risk of missing the start of fall classes this year, as the federal Immigration Department struggles to keep up with what it describes as a surge in applications.

The issue has sparked a complaint from the Indian High Commission in Ottawa, which said in a statement that it has received a number of petitions from Indian students frustrated with lengthy wait times for visa processing.

India is Canada’s largest source country for international postsecondary students. Students from outside Canada pay tuition fees that are often more than two or three times higher than those paid by domestic students, and that money has become a crucial source of funding to universities and colleges across the country.

According to the Immigration Department, the number of student visa applications is growing. Canada received more than 123,000 applications for student visas from India in the first five months of this year, an increase of 55 per cent over 2019, according to Aidan Strickland, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Sean Fraser. So far this year, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has processed more than 360,000 student visas, a 17-per-cent increase over the same period in 2021.

Students apply for the study permits only after they have been accepted to Canadian universities. Until their visa applications are processed they aren’t allowed to enter Canada to study – and that is true even if they have already paid tuition, or taken out student loans.

Ms. Strickland added in a statement that IRCC is still struggling with the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its operations around the world. She said the government is prioritizing applications from students aiming to begin their studies in September, but that not all applications will be processed in time for fall 2022.

“IRCC has seen an unprecedented volume of applications received for both initial study permits and extensions in 2022, not just from citizens of India but on a global scale,” Ms. Strickland said.

The number of students affected is not clear, but Canada’s diplomatic mission in India said in a tweet last week that a “large number” had experienced long wait times or not received visa decisions.

Federal data show that, as of the end of July, 34 per cent of pending international student visa applications were taking longer to process than government standards dictate.

Indian students contribute more than $4-billion in tuition fees to Canada’s postsecondary system, according to the statement from the Indian High Commission. More than 230,000 Indian students are enrolled at Canadian schools, the statement said.

At the University of Toronto, the number of students contacting registrars with study permit concerns is higher than usual, the university said in a statement. The university said it has been in constant contact with IRCC, and with the Minister’s office directly, to advocate for timely processing of study permit applications and to explain the impact of the delays on students. The statement added that any students unable to enter the country because of the delays can seek deferrals if they are eligible.

Gautham Kolluri, an international-student recruiter and immigration consultant based in Waterloo, Ont., said the number of students affected is likely in the thousands.

He said these are students who have accepted places offered to them at Canadian universities or colleges and expected to have their student visas approved in a matter of weeks. Instead, the process is taking months.

One client of his waited six months to get a study permit, he said.

Mr. Kolluri said he is advising some clients that they are unlikely to receive approval from IRCC before classes begin. At this point, he said, he’s recommending they defer until the next available intake, which can mean a delay until January, or in some cases until next September.

“They’re devastated. For them it’s their studies, but also their future career and opportunities in Canada that are affected,” Mr. Kolluri said. “We are losing these kind of good students who could make a contribution to Canada.”

Most students in India take out education loans in their home countries before coming to Canada. Mr. Kolluri said the interest on those loans starts accumulating even if the students haven’t been able to begin their studies, adding to the pressure they feel if there are problems with their study permits.

Before the pandemic, he said, visa approvals often came through in two to three weeks, and in some cases as quickly as 48 hours. Now, IRCC’s website says it takes up to 12 weeks on average for a study permit application from India to be approved. The target is eight weeks, according to the department.

Ms. Strickland said Mr. Fraser has announced that he expects to hire an additional 1,250 officers by the end of fall to tackle application backlogs and processing delays, paid in part with $85-million in additional funds directed to the department in the government’s 2021 fiscal update.

Source: International students waiting for visas from Ottawa at risk of missing start of classes

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More than 1.3 million immigration applications still in backlog

2022/08/26 Leave a comment

Will see what the data shows in coming months, as well as the various media coverage of specific cases. Usual approach of throwing money and people rather than fundamental policy and program changes.

In one sense, almost the “citizenshipization” of immigration programs, as the citizenship program has a history of growing backlogs that are addressed, when too politically embarrassing, by an injection of funds (happened under Liberal Minister Volpe and Conservative Minister Alexander):

Canada’s immigration minister now projects it will only take a few months longer than originally hoped to get application wait times back on track, even though the crisis in Ukraine and other “external” events have worsened the backlogs.

In January, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser vowed to eliminate backlogs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by the end of the year. That was before Canada launched a major response to the refugee crisis sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and approved hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and their families to come to Canada temporarily to escape the war.

Those efforts, combined with updates to the government’s aging technology, have led to longer waits for people who want to come to Canada, Fraser said.

As of the end of July, approximately 1.3 million immigration applications in the system have taken longer to process than the government’s service standards dictate they should. That’s about 54 per cent of all the pending applications in the system.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, Fraser said the department may need a few extra months before all immigration streams are back to normal processing times.

“Based on what we’re looking at right now, we shouldn’t be too, too far off the projection of getting back to service standards for work and study permits by the end of this year, and I expect that within a few months of that the visitors visas will be back to service standards,” Fraser said.

That’s barring any new international disasters, he said.

New hiring spree to address backlog

While dealing with the backlogs and humanitarian crises, the Canadian immigration system is also fielding unprecedented demand, Fraser said.

As of July 31, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada issued more than 349,000 new work permits so far this year, compared to 199,000 in all of 2021.

At a news conference Wednesday, Fraser announced the Immigration Department is in the midst of a hiring spree to bring 1,250 new employees on board by the end of the fall to tackle the massive backlogs in processing applications and the increased demand.

Fraser said the new hires have so far allowed the government to get the waits back on track for new applicants to the express entry permanent residence program, which is the main economic stream for new permanent residents to Canada.

“In the weeks and months ahead there’s going to be a series of new measures that we’re going to be releasing that’s going to help bring workers here more quickly, make it simpler for families to be reunited with their loved ones, and to hold ourselves accountable by being transparent,” Fraser said at the news conference outside of the Vancouver Convention Centre.

The backlogs have been of growing concern since shortly after the pandemic began, when health restrictions made borders more difficult to cross and immigration slowed considerably.

At the end of last year, the government dedicated $85 million to reducing wait times. Another $187.3 million was set aside for the next five years in the 2022 budget.

In June, the prime minister announced ministers would form a task force to deal with growing delays for immigration applications and other government services.

Source: More than 1.3 million immigration applications still in backlog

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Ontario’s population will surge by 30% in just over 20 years, according to StatsCan. Experts say we’re not ready

2022/08/26 Leave a comment

No serious questioning of the assumptions behind the study and those quoted whether this growth will be beneficial or not, and that many demographers disagree with the premise that large scale immigration will materially affect an aging population.

And of course, the experience over the past number of years have shown governments woefully inadequate in addressing healthcare, infrastructure and other programs to serve a growing population:

Ontario’s population is expected to experience sustained growth over the next two decades, but the province may not have the infrastructure to support the booming — and aging — population, some experts warn. 

The number of residents in the province could climb to more than 19 million by 2043, an increase of about 30 per cent since 2021, according to new projections from Statistics Canada. 

That figure is based on a forecast of medium growth, outlined in a report released Monday, which laid out various population projections for the coming decades. The province’s population, which sits at 14.8 million as of 2021, could surpass 21.0 million by 2043. 

But Ontario is ill-prepared to handle the growth, as it lacks the housing and general infrastructure to support the growing population, especially in major urban centres like Toronto, some experts say. 

“It’s obvious: we’re not prepared,” said Phil Soper, president and CEO of Royal LePage. “We can’t even handle the population growth we’ve had over the past 20 years — as households get small, people live longer and immigration numbers rise — let alone potential growth in the two decades to come.”

The lack of affordable housing and planning for population growth in Toronto could hamper the city’s future economic potential, said Sheila Block, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. She noted livability and sustainability are top-of-mind for both residents and investors. 

“If we don’t increase the supply of affordable housing, people will be living in substandard housing,” she said. “We are going to see more people under-housed.”

The city is already living with the consequences of improper planning and a growing population, said Block, who pointed to the crisis in affordable housing. 

“We need to talk about a sustainable future, a future where we see less damage from climate change and more equity,” she said. “Those are the kinds of issues that have to be considered, and affordable housing is one piece of that pie.”

Soper believes federal and provincial governments will soon be forced to address the crisis and “move aggressively” to support the population increase.

“The growth will force mandated densification laws, where community groups won’t be allowed to hold up the creation of housing because they don’t like it,” he predicted. 

The growth of Ontario’s population, along with that of Canada, as a whole, will largely be driven by immigration, noted Patrice Dion, a demographer with Statistics Canada. In 2021, when Canada’s border largely reopened, the country accepted more than 400,000 immigrants, representing 87.4 per cent of the country’s population-growth that year. 

While Soper and Block say Ontario isn’t prepared for the growth, they also say sustained immigration is necessary to address another key concern: an aging population. 

The country will need to rely on immigration to boost its cohort of working-age Canadians, because the natural growth rate (the number of births minus deaths) continues to decrease, said Block. 

“If you look at countries like Italy or Japan, which have broken immigration systems — Japan has been a very isolated country and it’s very challenging to become a citizen and Italy isn’t that much different — they’re going to face the kind of challenges Canada will, but to a much greater extent,” said Soper.

While Statistics Canada’s population projections vary widely — the different forecasts are based on a variety of factors, including fertility rates, life expectancy and immigration numbers — one thing is almost certain: Canada is expected to experience explosive growth in its cohort of older seniors, while the proportion of children in the country is expected to decline. 

More than 25 per cent of the population will be 65 or older by 2068, up from 18.5 per cent in 2021. Meanwhile, the number of Canadians above 85 may increase more than threefold over that period, from 871,000 in 2021 to 3.2 million in 2068. 

Canada will need to examine how it cares for its seniors, as more people join the group, said Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, director of financial security research at the National Institute on aging. 

“Over the next decade, we’re going to start seeing massive numbers of people needing care,” she said. 

“There’s going be a lot more of us being asked to care for seniors. The prospects to meet that challenge are not good,” said MacDonald, who noted the supports for seniors quickly fell apart during the pandemic. 

Source: Ontario’s population will surge by 30% in just over 20 years, according to StatsCan. Experts say we’re not ready

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Internal Audit of Immigration Pilot Programs: Lack of guiding principles

2022/08/25 Leave a comment

Always worth reading IRCC audit and evaluation reports. This audit covered three pilots, Start-Up Visa Program (2013-2018), Atlantic Immigration Pilot (2017-2021) and Caregivers Pilots (the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots) (2019-2024).

Since then, a number of other pilots have been added: Rural and Northern Immigration, Agri-Food, Home Care Provider, and arguably, Municipal Nominee Program.

Most striking observation: “there was no clearly defined guiding principles for pilot programs to better guide development, oversight, management, evaluation and transition of pilot programs.”

Conclusion:

Overall, the audit found that there was no clearly defined guiding principles for pilot programs to better guide development, oversight, management, evaluation and transition of pilot programs.

Due to the uniqueness of the objectives of each pilot program, pilots were managed independently, and existing departmental structures and processes were leveraged to support their development, implementation, and transition or termination. Although there were adequate fraud and program integrity risk management processes in place, there was no overarching guidance to create a formal risk management framework for pilot programs. The Department heavily relied upon the evaluation function to assess and report on the early performance results of pilot programs to support early decision-making regarding changes to a pilot program or the transition to a permanent program. However, there were limitations in assessing economic establishment and retention as the respective data is not available until years after the pilots have ended. Monitoring and reporting did not include Benefits Realization to inform further investment decisions.

As demands on IRCC continue to grow, and there is more potential to use pilot programs, clearly defined guiding principles for the management and evaluation of the pilot programs will support the holistic management and oversight of the Department’s pilot program portfolio and the broader achievement of departmental objectives. This will also provide direction and guidance for the development, implementation of individual pilot programs with consideration of leading practices and lessons learned. 

Management has accepted the audit findings and developed an action plan to address the recommendations.

Source: Internal Audit of Immigration Pilot Programs

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USA: What Happened To The Bills On Employment-Based Immigration?

2022/08/24 Leave a comment

Good but disconcerting recap:

The new Congress began with hope for a lasting solution to the employment-based green card backlog problem but may soon end with no solution at all. What happened?

Economists have found foreign-born scientists and engineers are vital to the competitiveness of companies in the United States and the American economy. “The ability to recruit global talent is a key factor that has contributed to U.S. leadership in science and research,” according to the MIT Science and Policy Review. “This talent has been vital for the development of U.S. science and responsible for numerous discoveries and innovations that have improved quality of life.” At U.S. universities, international students account for 74% of the full-time graduate students in electrical engineering and 72% in computer and information sciences as well as 50% to 70% in fields that include mathematics and materials sciences. https://embedly.forbes.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fdatawrapper.dwcdn.net%2FZbTwf%2F1%2F&display_name=Datawrapper&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdatawrapper.dwcdn.net%2FZbTwf%2F1%2F&image=https%3A%2F%2Fdatawrapper.dwcdn.net%2FZbTwf%2Fplain-s.png%3Fv%3D1&key=3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=dwcdn

Due to a low annual limit on employment-based green cards and a per-country limit of 7% from a single country, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimates that more than 2 million peoplefrom India will be waiting in the U.S. employment-based immigrant backlog by 2030. Many foreign-born scientists and engineers will potentially wait decades before gaining permanent residence and a chance to become U.S. citizens. 

The impact on competitiveness is significant. At U.S. universities, Indian graduate students in science and engineering declined by nearly 40%, between 2016 and 2019, according to a National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis. “During the same period (2016 to 2019), Indian students attending Canadian colleges and universities increased 182%. The difference in enrollment trends is largely a result of it being much easier for Indian students to work after graduation and become permanent residents in Canada compared to the United States.” Chinese student interest in attending U.S. universities has also declined.

In February 2021, the U.S. Citizenship Act (H.R. 1177), developed by the Biden administration, was introduced in Congress. The bill contained many immigration provisions and would have put an end to the employment-based immigrant backlog within 10 years. It included a higher annual green card limit, eliminated the per-country limit, provided permanent residence for those waiting with an approved immigrant petition for 10 years and excluded dependents from being counted against the annual limit. (See here.) It also would have exempted individuals with Ph.D.s in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields from numerical limits. 

Due to GOP opposition and the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate, the U.S. Citizenship Act turned out to be a messaging or placeholder bill that did not move in Congress. To obtain green card relief, a different measure would need to become law.

The America COMPETES (CHIPS) Act

The best opportunity for employment-based immigration looked like legislation aimed at enhancing U.S. competitiveness in semiconductors. On February 4, 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America COMPETES Act 222 to 210. The bill contained several immigration provisions but garnered only one Republican vote. In June 2021, the Senate passed a similar billwithout any immigration measures.

The House bill created an exemption from annual green card limits and backlogs for foreign nationals with a Ph.D. in STEM fields and those with a master’s degree “in a critical industry,” such as semiconductors. The bill also included Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-CA) LIKE Act to give foreign-born entrepreneurs an opportunity to earn lawful permanent residence. A recent NFAP report on immigrant founders of billion-dollar companies concluded many innovations only become useful through entrepreneurship.

During a House-Senate conference committee, Rep. Lofgren urged the Senate to accept the House’s immigrant measures. The Biden administration, businesses and universities wanted to see, at minimum, the exemption for individuals with Ph.D.s in STEM fields become law.

The exemption for STEM Ph.D.s was likely doomed the moment Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) appointed Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) to the bill’s conference committee. McConnell gave Grassley, the ranking Republican member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, a veto, in effect, over any immigration provision. Over several months, he exercised that veto and no group of Senate Republicans stepped forward to prevent it.

In June 2022, Grassley asserted he was against including immigration measures in a non-immigration bill. Critics pointed out Grassley had no problem, indeed lauded, including a restrictive measure on EB-5 immigrant investor visas in a non-immigration bill only a few months earlier (March 2022). It appeared evident that Grassley opposed any liberalization of U.S. immigration laws, no matter how beneficial economists and others believed a specific provision would be for the country and claimed a procedural reason.

Senate Democrats approached Grassley with iterations of the Ph.D. STEM provision, but he refused to budge, according to sources. He did not vote for final passage or the motion to proceed to the bill on the Senate floor (a 64 to 34 vote) but got his way on the legislation. The final bill included no measures to exempt Ph.D.s in STEM fields from green card limits or any other significant positive immigration provision. (The legislation was H.R. 4346, renamed the CHIPS Act of 2022.) 

A letter (July 27, 2022) to House and Senate leaders from the chief human resource officers of leading semiconductor companies called on Congress to admit more high-tech talent: “We are writing to you about an underappreciated but vital issue for both our economy and national security interest: the need for more talented and highly skilled individuals to fill the immediate labor demand of the technology industry. Workers with advanced education and knowledge in cutting-edge technical areas, specifically in science, technology and engineering (STEM) fields, are the fuel that will propel our economy and country into the next industrial and technological era.”

Budget Reconciliation

Another legislative vehicle, a budget reconciliation bill, became law without any measures to relieve the green card backlog or make other positive immigration changes. For months, Democrats in Congress talked about using budget reconciliation to enact immigration reforms. The reconciliation process overcomes Senate filibuster rules by allowing passage with a simple majority. However, under Congressional rules, reconciliation can only include certain measures.

The Senate parliamentarian advised in late 2021 that including provisions to legalize undocumented immigrants in a budget reconciliation bill would violate Senate rules. Senate Democrats also gave green card backlog reduction language informally to the Senate parliamentarian, but she did not provide a ruling on it, according to a Congressional source.

Immigration reform supporters pointed to language recapturing unused employment-based green cards that became law in budget reconciliation in 2005. However, the Senate parliamentarian said, according to the Congressional source, that the earlier parliamentarian never approved that language and it was allowed because nobody at the time raised a budget point of order since the provision was supported on a bipartisan basis.

In that context, it becomes clearer why, at different times, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) threw cold water on the idea of including green card provisions in reconciliation. A Senate parliamentarian’s advice can be overcome by a vote but Sen. Durbin indicated getting all Senate Democrats to vote against a parliamentarian’s ruling on immigration was not “realistic.”

The issue appeared to be moot until Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) reached a deal with other Democrats and the reconciliation bill became the Inflation Reduction Act. The bill passed Congress without any green card measures. Senate Democrats voted against all amendments to the legislation, including those that would have restricted access to asylum via the public health measure Title 42. 

Based on Sen. Durbin’s earlier statement, it seems unlikely Sen. Manchin or Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) would have supported including green card recapture in the bill if, as appears probable, the current Senate parliamentarian advised the measure would violate budget reconciliation rules. Note also Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) adopted a strategy of zeroing out spending within the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction to force Republican amendments on immigration to meet a 60-vote margin for germaneness. (Title 42 did not fall within the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction.)

Other Legislation

Another legislative vehicle emerged due to international events. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a weak point for the Putin regime was its ability (or inability) to keep high-skilled technical talent living and working inside Russia. Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell recommended using legislation to “Drain Putin’s Brains.” 

In a letter to the House on April 28, 2022, the Biden administration provided legislative language on Russian scientists and engineers as part of the FY 2022 emergency supplemental funding for Ukraine. The language would have allowed Russians with a master’s or doctoral degree in a STEM field to obtain permanent residence (a green card) without a backlog or employer sponsorship. 

The emergency supplemental for Ukraine passed Congress without any non-spending measures, including the provision for Russian scientists and engineers.

In July 2022, hopes were high the FY 2023 defense authorization bill would include an amendment on green cards for individuals with Ph.D.s in science and engineering. In what has become a familiar story, it was not to be. 

“According to a Congressional source, the House Rules Committeedid not rule the amendment in order because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the provision would cost $1 billion over 10 years,” as reported in July. “To address the issue and offset the cost, a $7,500 fee was added for the individuals who received permanent residence under the provision. However, the House Ways and Means Committee said the fee could not be included because it amounted to a tax and, therefore, violated Clause 5(a) of Rule 21 of the rules of the House of Representatives.” 

It is unclear how CBO determined the $1 billion cost and how advocates can address the issues raised by the CBO score in the future. There is no word about adding the provision to the Senate’s defense bill.

A few bills related to employment-based immigration remain in play in Congress. On June 7, 2022, H.R. 3648, the Eagle Act of 2022, was reported out of the House Judiciary Committee on a 22-14 vote. The bill would eliminate the per-country limit for employment-based immigrants, with a phase-in period. It also would add new restrictions and requirements on H-1B visas, raise the per-country limit on family applicants from 7% to 15%, provide protection to children from aging out on a parent’s application and allow for adjustment of status within two years of an approved employment petition. Individuals would receive work authorization and advance parole for travel purposes.

In the House defense authorization bill, an amendment was included by Rep. Deborah K. Ross (D-NC) and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) to “protect dependent children of green card applicants and employment-based nonimmigrants who face deportation when they age out of dependent status,” reported Roll Call. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced the America’s Children Act, the Senate companion. The measure in the defense authorization bill would need to pass in the Senate to become law. (See here for more on this issue.) Sen. Grassley said in an August 2022 town hall meeting the measure could be included in an omnibus or the defense bill “if we can get bipartisan agreement,” which is positive but short of a personal commitment to support the legislation.

In June 2022, in the House Appropriations Committee, an amendment was added to the House Homeland Security spending bill to provide relief for individuals waiting for green cards in the family and employment-based backlog. The amendment authorizes using unused green cards going back to 1992, per Bloomberg Government. “The language of the amendment (see here) . . . means tens of thousands of individuals waiting in the employment-based immigrant backlog would benefit, as well as individuals waiting in family backlogs,” as reported in this Forbes article in June.

The Senate Appropriations bill for FY 2023 for Homeland Security also contains green card measures for those waiting in family and employment backlogs. The House and Senate green card measures face significant obstacles since non-spending provisions face a high hurdle to remain in a spending bill.

Blocking High-Skilled Immigrants

House and Senate Democrats and the Biden administration have supported or proposed several bills and measures to reduce the employment-based green card backlogs and exempt highly skilled foreign nationals from immigration quotas. Senate Democrats did not sacrifice a chance to pass the CHIPS Act after Sen. Grassley opposed including a STEM Ph.D. exemption. 

Republicans in Congress in a position to influence legislative outcomes are now opposing any positive measures on legal immigration. As one executive of a leading technology company told me, “If there are people in Congress who aren’t going to support more green cards for Ph.D.s in STEM fields, what will they support?”

Source: What Happened To The Bills On Employment-Based Immigration?

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OECD: What are the risks and rewards of start-up visas? | Quels sont les risques et les avantages des visas pour start-up?

2022/08/23 Leave a comment

Useful international comparisons and caution regarding the benefits:

“Investor and entrepreneur visas in most OECD countries focus on owners with capital, experience and a business that is already operating, often with high turnover. Founders with potentially high impact and transformational ideas for new businesses, but without their own capital or income, are generally not eligible for existing visa programs. They may also fall short of the requirements for formal education in those countries offering skilled migration programs in some countries.

·         To be able to attract, admit and retain high potential entrepreneurs, many countries have introduced visa programmes specifically designed for founders and employees of start-up firms. All such programs focus on people with scalable, transformative and innovative business ideas at the early stage of development. 

·         Some countries assess applicants through the immigration service, but most rely on expert panels or government bodies and agencies with a focus on SMEs, business creation and innovation.

·         Determining which start-ups have high potential is not easy to scale up to a mass decision making process.

·         A start-up is, by nature, a high-risk venture and many fail. Managing this risk is a key concern of visa programs.

·         The benefits of the visa programme for the founder and the business community are evident. There is the potential for personal enrichment for the founder and opportunities for the business community to learn from both success and failure. However, these programs must also demonstrate there are benefits to the public – including that founders are contributing to the community that made their success possible.

·         Migrant founders are offered a range of generous conditions, including permanent residence, state funding, grants, professional contacts, mentoring, access to incubators, support for family reunification, simplified application procedures and expedited processing. 

·         There are real economic benefits from hosting successful start-ups, in terms of job creation, new services and supporting a sustained culture of innovation and forward thinking. An SUV programme can make the country more visible for investors, firms and individuals looking for a destination associated with innovation.

·         However, there is currently little quantitative evidence of the benefits that migrant founders bring to the host country. More needs to be done to build evaluation frameworks so that the policy settings can be refined and the generous support provided to start up founders can be justified to the public. 

·         There are also important issues to resolve in protecting the integrity of the programs – ensuring that programs are not deliberately misused to circumvent the controls in other programs (skilled migration and business visas) and that the programme delivers on its policy aims.”

View or download the full report | Consultez ou téléchargez le rapport complet (en anglais) :

·         https://www.oecd.org/migration/mig/MPD-28-What-are-the-risks-and-rewards-of-start-up-visas.pdf

From the conclusion:

However, countries that already have SUV programs should establish more robust processes to evaluate the outcomes of participants and adjust policy settings.

Countries that have established start-up visas have yet to develop metrics by which to judge the success of their start up programs. The SUVs presented in this brief often require more administrative resources for adjudication than other visas.

Evaluations are needed to refine policy settings and assess the benefit to the public, which funds the administration of the programs and bears the cost of any failures. Start-up visa programs are relatively recent and their value is yet to be demonstrated quantitatively, although they have not been subject to particular scrutiny so far.

Migration, or even the private sector, alone does not drive fundamental technological change.

Studies suggest that it is a broad co-operation between government, the private sector and tertiary institutions that provide fundamental advancements in science and technology – with sometimes no immediate commercial applicability. These advancements provide base level tools for the private sector to develop into products that have a real impact on the economy and people’s lives. While it is important to have visa options for the highly talented with unconventional backgrounds, migration is only one part of a larger project to foster innovation.

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Ipsos: Where is the US public on immigration?

2022/08/22 Leave a comment

Interesting overdue with historic data:

Immigration is a perennial and divisive issue in American politics. Our latest polling with NPR demonstrates just how true that is.

As the midterms approach, the misinformation and the heated political rhetoric surrounding immigration seem to be resonating with the public.

But why is that? How did we get here? In short, populism and the persistent feeling many Americans have that the system is broken are creating the political ingredients that drive some of this sentiment. This is our context.

That and more below in five charts, looking at immigration, nativism, and the politics of it all in the U.S.

  1. Immigration then and now. In the first part of the 21st century, immigrants are increasingly making up a larger portion of the total U.S. population. The late 19th century and early 20th century were the last time immigrants made up a similar share of the U.S. population. Nativism grew in prominence then, just as it does now.immigration over time
  2. Who is America? Even as immigrants are making up a larger portion of Americans, fewer Americans feel immigrants are an important part of American identity. This is true regardless of party. Independents and Republicans saw the most notable drop over the past four years, though the dip among Democrats is also significant.Who is America
  3. System remains broken. Despite a new presidential administration, a pandemic, a recession, and inflation, all these things haven’t swayed the fundamental context Americans feel the country exists within–the system is broken. Populism underpins this moment.System is broken
  4. Invasion? The populist currents running through the public frame how people feel about borders and their security. Right now, many Americans feel that the U.S. is experiencing an invasion at the southern border. Half of Hispanics and a majority of white respondents feel this way. Though, this opinion is most pronounced among Republicans.Populism
  5. Not a monolith. Hispanic Americans, many of whom report experiencing xenophobic comments, are split on whether it is more important to help immigrants escape poverty and violence and find success in the U.S. or secure America’s borders. Partisanship drives opinion here as it does for the general public. A tale of two Americas—one Red, the other one Blue.Not a monolith

Immigration is a culture war topic that brings out some of our most divisive rhetoric and tendencies. Populism and nativism are the cultural currents framing this topic and this moment. This is not new in American politics.

Immigration is an issue that is unlikely to fade away anytime soon.

Source: Where is the public on immigration?

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