Immigration department received intelligence about huge rise in clandestine U.S.-Canada border crossings last year

2024/12/07 Leave a comment

Good questions regarding senior official and minister awareness:

Intelligence experts within Canada’s border agency informed the federal immigration department last December about a big rise in illegal crossings of the Canada-U.S. border, including into the States, which raises questions about why action to curb it was not taken earlier.

An intelligence document sent to senior Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada officials, says smugglers were moving people across the border in both directions, with some foreign nationals flying into Canada at major airports and swiftly slipping across the border into the United States.

The Canada Border Services Agency’s intelligence analysis says clandestine entries have led to thousands of refugee claims, mostly in the Greater Toronto Area.

The document says “the Southbound movement into the United States (US) has grown significantly since 2022″ adding that “the majority of individuals who attempt to cross southbound illegally arrive by air, mainly at Montreal Trudeau International Airport and Toronto Pearson International Airport and move quickly.”

It found that “the vast majority were very likely in Canada for less than 6 months of which a large portion were in Canada for less than 3 weeks.”

Ministers have insisted in recent weeks, amid heightened tensions between U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and Ottawa over illegal immigration into the U.S., that Canada’s borders are secure.

But the emergence of the detailed analysis by the CBSA’s Intelligence and Investigations Directorate raises questions about whether ministers were ignorant of the extent of people smuggling into the U.S. from Canada, and in the other direction….

Source: Immigration department received intelligence about huge rise in clandestine U.S.-Canada border crossings last year

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Ministry ignored immigration impacts: Report

2024/11/06 Leave a comment

Sigh…. Once again, the value of evaluation reports is demonstrated and should enjoy broader coverage for their findings:

The Canadian Immigration Department has admitted to ignoring whether foreign workers took Canadian jobs or kept wages low, Blacklock’s Reporter has reported.

Impacts are not monitored, said an internal report.

“The program is built on the assumption that benefits to Canada from the facilitation of select foreign workers exceed any potential harm to the domestic labour market,” said the Evaluation Of The International Mobility Program. “However document review and key informants pointed out that labour market impacts are not monitored.”

Auditors scrutinized a program that allowed more than 3,970,000 foreign workers into Canada from 2014 to 2022.

Most were men under the age of 34 and came from India and China.

Almost half applied to stay in Canada as permanent residents, wrote the Department of Immigration.

The Evaluation report said there were no attempts to make sure Canadian workers and wages were protected.

“The program is less aligned with commitments to consider Canadian workers first especially given the program’s continued growth,” it said….

Source: Ministry ignored immigration impacts: Report

Link: Evaluation of the International Mobility Program

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Canadians increasingly divided on immigration, government research shows

2024/08/01 Leave a comment

Confirms other surveys. Karas is editorialized by adding DEI concerns to the mix as no such question was asked in the survey (https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2024/ircc/Ci4-183-1-2024-eng.pdf):

Canadians are becoming increasingly divided on the federal government’s current immigration targets, with over a third now saying we’re taking in “too many” people from other countries.

The Department of Immigration requested polling agency Ipsos conduct a national survey on its current immigration quotas. 

“Many participants felt that the targets set for the next three years, which were presented to them, were too high,” reads the survey. “They could not fathom how cities, that are already receiving high volumes of immigrants and where infrastructure is already under great strain, could accommodate the proposed targets.”

The survey cost $295,428 and included 3,000 people canvassed with two surveys and 14 focus groups.

When asked if they thought that immigration has a positive effect on their city or town, just over half, 55% agreed, while 22% said the effect has been negative. 

The results were similar when broken down provincially, with 58% saying that the immigration has had a positive effect on their province, compared to 24% who disagreed. 

Asked if immigration had a net “negative effect” on their province, 41% of Ontarians surveyed said yes, while a third of Prince Edward Islanders, 33%, and 27% of Albertans saw immigration as a net negative.

Only 48% of respondents felt that the current targets were “about the right number,” while a little over a third, 35%, said it was ‘too many.’ 

Another small cohort of 12% said that “too few” immigrants are coming to Canada. 

The “too many” sentiment was felt highest in Alberta at 52%, followed closely by Nova Scotia and Ontario at 51% and 49%, respectively.

On the national level, 63% said immigration has a positive effect and 23% said it’s negative. 

This shows the erosion of a long-held immigration consensus in Canada, one expert says.

“For the first time in recent history, support for immigration has eroded steadily amongst the public,” immigration lawyer Sergio Karas told True North.

“There are a multiplicity of reasons why this is happening. Still, the main issues are the cost of living, housing, competition for good jobs, and the general perception that the recent cohorts of immigrants do not contribute to the economy in the same way that previous generations have.”

The immigration department said the “broad sentiment” indicates support for immigration generally but with the caveat of “not right now” or “how are we going to make this work?”

Participants also expressed “strong appeals for reducing the barriers that prevent experienced newcomers from practicing in their fields of expertise,” citing nurses, teachers and skilled labourers as necessary examples. 

However, “reactions to prioritizing those with business skills were more mixed.” 

On the issue of family and immigration, respondents generally agreed on “setting a higher target for sponsoring spouses and partners, who are likely to be working-age, and a lower target for sponsoring parents and grandparents, who might put a strain on the healthcare system rather than contribute to the economy.”

Several participants suggested expediting immigration applications for healthier parents and grandparents over “frailer ones.”

“There is also resentment, especially from immigrants who have been in Canada for many years, that the current crop of newcomers is far more interested in receiving government benefits, and that their language and work skills are not up to par,” said Karas. “This seems to be especially acute about the large number of refugees that Canada has admitted.”

According to the department’s data, few participants believed that Canada was doing the “right thing” by providing asylum to large numbers of refugees. 

While some respondents recognized the “need to assist,” they were also concerned about Canada’s ability to “realistically support population growth given the current strains on public infrastructure.”

Karas said that a further reason for Canadians’ shifting opinion of immigration is the notion that the government is “admitting anyone” without properly vetting them for their skills, language ability and security. 

“While this is not always true, the public is sensitive to how immigrants from non-Western countries are changing the face of Canada,” said Karas. 

“The public concern is that the changes are too rapid and too deep and that immigrants should do more to adapt to existing customs, rather than the public being obligated to adapt to them. Current policies of  Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion have exacerbated that perception as organizations show a preference for EDI hires rather than using a merit system.”

Source: Canadians increasingly divided on immigration, government research shows

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Des experts se sentent ignorés par le ministère de l’Immigration

2024/03/30 Leave a comment

More on this sorry episode although unclear how widespread these perceptions shared among IRCC staff (but not unique…):

Une personne employée au sein d’IRCC, n’était pas surprise de ce développement. Elle voit le travail de fonctionnaires ignoré depuis des années quand leurs conclusions ne vont pas dans le sens des plans du gouvernement.

Nous donnerons à cette personne le nom fictif de Marie. Francopresse a accepté de protéger son identité, parce qu’elle craint des répercussions au travail.

Un travail qui dérange

Selon elle, la plupart des fonctionnaires n’oseraient jamais aller contre le courant : «Dès que tu dis un peu la vérité, fearless advice, dis ce que tu penses, c’est fini.»

Elle voit donc peu de gens qui osent présenter des points de vue divergents dans la fonction publique. «Il n’y a rien de pire dans une démocratie.»

Elle doute d’ailleurs que même les avertissements émanant de fonctionnaires se rendent toujours au bureau du ministre de l’Immigration.

«Je pense que plusieurs sous-ministres et sous-ministres adjoints croient que leur mission est de protéger [le ministre]. Ils empêchent que des choses soient écrites ou s’assurent que ça ne monte pas pour pouvoir dire “le ministre n’était pas au courant, donc il a continué sa mauvaise idée, mais il ne le savait pas”.»

La vérité étouffée

Selon Andrew Griffith, directeur général à IRCC de 2009 à 2011, un certain degré de tension est normal, même bénéfique.

«La bureaucratie est censée offrir des conseils sans peur en fonction de son analyse et de son expertise et le niveau politique doit apporter sa perspective», explique-t-il.

Mais la transmission des conseils à travers l’échelle bureaucratique est floue, prévient-il. La parole est habituellement plus franche chez les directeurs, mais «plus haut, les sous-ministres adjoints et les sous-ministres sont moins directs en fonction de leurs efforts à répondre aux besoins politiques».

«C’est probablement là que réside la majeure partie de la frustration liée à l’ignorance de l’expertise», précise M. Griffith.

C’est au sein même de la fonction publique que l’information semble bloquer, corrobore Marie. «Les politiciens préfèreraient éviter de faire des erreurs, mais ils se sont entourés de hauts fonctionnaires opportunistes, ambitieux, peu compétents qui étouffent la vérité.»

«Les hauts fonctionnaires qui pensent seulement à leur carrière sont le pire problème, la pire plaie. Les ministres peuvent influencer leur carrière, alors ils s’autocensurent, censurent les autres et s’entourent de gens peu compétents ou qui leur ressemblent», poursuit-elle.

Manque d’expertise chez les cadres supérieurs

Dans le rapport d’un examen effectué par l’ancien sous-ministre d’IRCC, Neil Yeates, ce dernier parle de tensions à IRCC qui seraient «exacerbées par la forte baisse d’expertise en matière d’immigration parmi les [sous-ministres adjoints] et les [directeurs généraux]».

Selon lui, cette baisse d’expertise est relativement nouvelle et crée un «manque de crédibilité vis-à-vis des employés de première ligne et des gestionnaires» qui connaissent bien la Loi sur l’immigration et la protection des réfugiés.

«Qui voudrait d’une douche froide?»

L’immigration a toujours été très politisée, fait remarquer Andrew Griffith. «Là où les choses se sont gâtées, c’est dans l’encouragement de l’immigration à grande échelle qu’a défendu l’Initiative du siècle, diverses organisations commerciales [et d’autres] sans qu’aucun d’entre eux, jusqu’à trop tard, ne commence à dire : “Attendez une minute, il va y avoir des implications à cela. Avons-nous les capacités d’absorption pour tous ces immigrants?”»

Il ne croit pas que l’argument selon lequel il faut hausser les seuils d’immigration afin de remédier au vieillissement de la population ait été assez remis en question. Surtout lorsque l’on considère le nombre de démographes qui ne partageaient pas cette analyse.

Plusieurs économistes ont aussi critiqué cette approche, dont Mikal Skuterud, professeur d’économie à l’Université de Waterloo, en Ontario. Il a l’impression que parmi tous les experts en immigration, ce sont surtout les économistes qui sont ignorés.

«Qui voudrait d’une douche froide? Pourquoi voudraient-ils nous parler si on ne leur donne pas les réponses qu’ils veulent?», demande-t-il.

Le gouvernement avance que l’augmentation de l’immigration permet la croissance économique, «mais pour l’économiste, ce n’est pas vraiment honnête».

«Pour l’économiste, la croissance économique vient de l’augmentation du PIB par habitant, explique-t-il. Et rien ne prouve que l’augmentation de l’immigration fasse croitre le PIB par habitant.»

En fait, dans les dernières années, celui-ci a chuté. «Les économistes avaient donc raison, mais ils ont été complètement ignorés sur cette question», déplore Mikal Skuterud.

«Je ne pense pas que l’identité de la personne qui transmet le message soit importante, tant que le message est conforme aux objectifs du gouvernement», ajoute-t-il.

Étant lui-même immigrant, le professeur aimerait pouvoir dire qu’une hausse de l’immigration améliorera le sort économique de tous. «C’est une très belle histoire à vendre, mais c’est juste faux, martèle-t-il. Ce n’est pas si simple.»

Les affaires, ce n’est pas l’économie

Christopher Ragan, professeur en économie à l’Université McGill, à Montréal, était membre du Conseil consultatif en matière de croissance économique mis sur pied par le gouvernement libéral en 2016 et présidé par Dominic Barton, ex-directeur de la firme McKinsey et cofondateur de l’Initiative du siècle.

«Je ne voyais aucune raison à l’époque, et je n’en vois aucune aujourd’hui, de penser que l’augmentation de l’immigration puisse être le pivot d’une stratégie de croissance. Du moins, pas le type de croissance qui devrait nous intéresser. J’ai mené ce combat au sein du Conseil et j’ai perdu», a déclaré l’économiste sur X en janvier 2024.

Sa position n’a pas été retenue dans les rapports du Conseil, probablement parce qu’«un consensus entre 12 personnes n’arrivera jamais», déclare-t-il en entrevue avec Francopresse.

«Le gouvernement perçoit mal l’immigration et son rôle dans la croissance générale et je crois que le Conseil y est pour quelque chose», assure-t-il.

Christopher Ragan était l’un des seuls économistes au sein de ce conseil : «La plupart étaient des gens d’affaires, ce qui est problématique pour un conseil sur la croissance. […] Leur point de vue est important, mais ils n’ont généralement pas beaucoup de compétences en termes de politiques.»

«Je pense que le gouvernement a aussi écouté le lobby des affaires qui a demandé plus d’immigration, en particulier d’immigration temporaire, pour remplir des pénuries de main-d’œuvre, parce qu’ils préfèrent embaucher des immigrants que d’augmenter les salaires», se désole-t-il.

Source: Des experts se sentent ignorés par le ministère de l’Immigration

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Government was warned two years ago high immigration could affect housing costs

2024/01/12 Leave a comment

Public service providing “fearless advice” while government, as is its right, rejected it in favour of ongoing increases in permanent and temporary immigration. Advice to former immigration minister Fraser who now, ironically, and perhaps deservedly so, is now the housing minister who has to clean up this mess (not doable in substantive terms before the election).

Eerily similar to some of my earlier opinion pieces, Increasing immigration to boost population? Not so fast.:

Federal public servants warned the government two years ago that large increases to immigration could affect housing affordability and services, internal documents show.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press through an access-to-information request show Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada analyzed the potential effects immigration would have on the economy, housing and services, as it prepared its immigration targets for 2023 to 2025.

The deputy minister, among others, was warned in 2022 that housing construction had not kept up with the pace of population growth.

“In Canada, population growth has exceeded the growth in available housing units,” one slide deck reads.

“As the federal authority charged with managing immigration, IRCC policy-makers must understand the misalignment between population growth and housing supply, and how permanent and temporary immigration shapes population growth.”

Immigration accounts for nearly all population growth in Canada, given the country’s aging demographics.

The federal government ultimately decided to increase the number of permanent residents Canada welcomes each year to 500,000 in 2025, a decision that drew considerable attention and scrutiny. It means in 2025, Canada will welcome nearly twice as many permanent residents as it did in 2015.

The document reveals federal public servants were well aware of the pressures high population growth would have on housing and services.

“Rapid increases put pressure on health care and affordable housing,” public servants warned. “Settlement and resettlement service providers are expressing short-term strain due to labour market conditions, increased levels and the Afghanistan and Ukraine initiatives.”

Housing affordability has now become a political liability for the Liberal government. The Conservatives have gained considerable momentum over the last year as the party pounces on affordability issues, while avoiding the issue of immigration in particular. These pressures have forced the Liberal government to refocus its efforts on housing policy and begin to address the spike in international students with new rules.

Recent data shows Canada’s pace of population growth continues to set records as the country brings in a historic number of temporary residents as well, largely through international student and temporary foreign worker programs.

The country’s population grew by more than 430,000 during the third quarter of 2023, marking the fastest pace of population growth in any quarter since 1957.

Experts spanning from Bay Street to academic institutions have warned that Canada’s strong population growth is eroding housing affordability, as demand outpaces supply.

The Bank of Canada has offered similar analysis. Deputy governor Toni Gravelle delivered a speech in December warning that strong population growth is pushing rents and home prices upward.

Public opinion polls also show Canadians are increasingly concerned about the pressure immigration is putting on services, infrastructure and housing, leading to waning support for high immigration.

The Liberal government has defended its immigration policy decisions, arguing that immigrants help bring about economic prosperity and help with the country’s demographics as the population ages.

However, amid the heightened scrutiny of the Liberal government’s immigration policy, Immigration Minister Marc Miller levelled out the annual target at 500,000 permanent residents for 2026.

The documents from 2022 note that Canada’s immigration targets have exceeded the recommendations of some experts, including the Century Initiative, an organization that advocates for growing the country’s population to 100 million by the end of the century.

However, attention is now shifting from these targets to the steep rise in non-permanent residents. Between July and October, about three-quarters of Canada’s population growth came from temporary residents, including international students and temporary foreign workers.

That trend is raising alarms about the increase in businesses’ reliance on low-wage migrant workers and the luring of international student byshady post-secondary institutions.

Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo who specializes in immigration policy, says the federal government appears to have “lost control” of temporary migration flows.

Unlike the annual targets for permanent residents, the number of temporary residents is dictated by demand for migrant workers and international students.

He also notes there is a link between the targets for permanent residents and the flow of temporary residents.

“To the extent that you increase permanent numbers, and migrants realize the way you get a PR is to come here as a temporary resident … then migrants are incentivized to kind of come and try their luck,” he said.

Skuterud, who has been a vocal critic of the federal government’s immigration policy, says the benefits of high immigration have been exaggerated by the Liberals.

He said that starting around 2015, when the Liberal government was first elected, a narrative developed in Canada that “immigration was kind of a solution to Canada’s economic growth problems.”

And while the professor says that narrative is one that people like to believe, he notes higher immigration does little when it comes to increasing living standards, as measured by real GDP per capita.

Public servants at IRCC are in agreement, the released documents suggest.

“Increasing the working age population can have a positive impact on gross domestic product, but little effect on GDP per capita,” public servants noted.

Source: Government was warned two years ago high immigration could affect housing costs – Moose Jaw Today

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Un premier observatoire sur l’immigration francophone au Canada

2023/11/10 Leave a comment

Small change compared to the CERC grant of close to $100 million…

Le premier observatoire en immigration francophone au Canada a été inauguré mercredi. Examinant un sujet souvent politisé, l’organisme cherchera à favoriser le développement de connaissances et à « avoir une portée sur le milieu gouvernemental, communautaire et universitaire ».

L’observatoire « contribuera aux efforts menés par le Canada pour favoriser l’accueil et l’intégration des immigrants francophones », a déclaré par voie de communiqué le ministre canadien de l’Immigration, Marc Miller, soulignant que « l’immigration francophone joue un rôle clé pour soutenir la vitalité et la croissance des communautés francophones hors Québec ».

M. Miller a également annoncé un investissement de près de 85 000 $ auprès de l’Université de l’Ontario français (UOF) pour la « mise en place » de cet observatoire, dont la cérémonie d’inauguration a eu lieu en fin d’après-midi au Centre francophone de Toronto.

« Là, on a un financement d’Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada [IRCC] pour le démarrage. On espère que le financement va se poursuivre au fil des ans pour pouvoir assurer la viabilité de cette initiative », indiquait plus tôt au Devoir la professeure de l’UOF qui a mené le projet, Linda Cardinal.

Dans les 20 dernières années, plusieurs initiatives de recherche s’intéressant à l’immigration francophone se sont essoufflées par manque de financement ou de structure institutionnelle, explique-t-elle.

Les membres de l’Observatoire en immigration francophone sont encore en train d’en « confirmer » les objectifs, mais l’organisme compte notamment organiser des ateliers éducatifs, ainsi que produire et « mettre en valeur » des données, explique Mme Cardinal.

Une première activité aura lieu dès jeudi, se réjouit-elle. Il s’agit d’une « école d’automne », au cours de laquelle 25 doctorants, professeurs, représentants de groupes communautaires et fonctionnaires seront « initiés à la statistique linguistique, en particulier en matière d’immigration ». Des recherches porteront également sur la perception qu’ont les immigrants de la francophonie au Canada, ainsi que sur la « notion d’accueil ».

« Politisation » de l’immigration

L’observatoire espère aussi participer aux discussions sur la mise en oeuvre de la nouvelle politique en immigration francophone d’Ottawa. Depuis la réforme de la Loi sur les langues officielles, IRCC doit « adopter une politique en matière d’immigration francophone visant à favoriser l’épanouissement des minorités francophones au Canada, notamment en assurant le rétablissement et l’accroissement de leur poids démographique ».

C’est dans cette lignée qu’ont été présentées les nouvelles cibles d’immigration francophone hors Québec, qui passeront de 4,4 % actuellement à 6 % en 2024, 7 % en 2025, puis 8 % en 2026. Des taux « ambitieux », selon le ministre Miller, mais qui ne suffiront pas à « renverser le déclin de la francophonie », si l’on écoute la Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne, qui réclame une hausse progressive commençant à 12 % en 2024 et allant jusqu’à 20 % en 2036.

Un sondage publié fin octobre indique toutefois que l’appui aux cibles d’immigration actuelles est en chute libre : 44 % des Canadiens affirment que « le Canada accueille trop d’immigrants », soit une croissance record de 17 points par rapport à 2022.

« Ces statistiques, c’est un portrait du moment. […] Ce qu’on entend, c’est des gens qui politisent la question de l’immigration parce qu’il y a des élections qui s’en viennent. Il y a des enjeux réels dans les services sociaux, en matière de logement, mais ces enjeux existaient avant les débats sur l’immigration », explique-t-elle.

Mais il n’y a « personne au Canada qui dit qu’il est contre l’immigration », ajoute-t-elle. « Un observatoire comme le nôtre pourrait contribuer [au débat] de façon à mieux faire comprendre la situation […] à distance de la politisation. »

Plusieurs consultations

Celle qui est aussi vice-rectrice adjointe à la recherche de l’établissement inauguré en 2021 affirme que, depuis sa création, l’UOF souhaitait faire de la question de l’immigration l’« un de ses créneaux d’excellence ».

Pour mener à bien le projet, Mme Cardinal a consulté des chercheurs afin de « connaître leurs priorités ». « L’idée, c’était d’héberger cette initiative à l’UOF, mais avec une portée pancanadienne », ajoute-t-elle. L’Université d’Ottawa, l’Université Simon Fraser, l’Université de Moncton et la Chaire d’excellence en recherche du Canada sur la migration et l’intégration, à l’Université métropolitaine de Toronto, sont ainsi des partenaires de l’observatoire.

« En recherche, il faut toujours travailler en collaboration pour avoir un impact et pour susciter l’adhésion — et aussi pour s’assurer qu’en francophonie canadienne, notamment, on crée une relève, soutient-elle. On responsabilise nos universités à l’importance du thème de l’immigration. Depuis les années 2000, l’immigration fait partie de la redéfinition même de ce qu’est la francophonie en contexte minoritaire. »

Les travaux de l’observatoire porteront surtout sur l’immigration francophone en contexte minoritaire. Or, le Québec sera « une base de comparaison très intéressante », indique Mme Cardinal. Et l’Ontario a aussi « des choses à dire au Québec, notamment sur la notion d’accueil. […] On espère que le Québec va s’intéresser à nous ».

Source: Un premier observatoire sur l’immigration francophone au Canada

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Immigrating to Canada? The system is backlogged and at times unfair, a new report confirms

2023/10/20 Leave a comment

Pretty condemning report, reflecting political and official level weaknesses. Money quotes:

Overall, the report concluded that the Immigration Department’s ability to reduce backlogs is hampered because officials are taking in more applications than what they can handle under the immigration targets the government has set.

Another contributing factor, it said, is the failure of the immigration minister to use his authority “to apply intake controls” during the pandemic.

One despairs at times…:

Immigration applicants have long complained that newer applications are being processed ahead of the older ones, while some visa posts finalize the same files much faster than others.

Those experiences have been validated by the Auditor General in a report released Thursday that found Canada’s immigration backlogs have persisted, with the length of time some permanent residence applications are in the system ballooning in some programs.

The audit focused on eight programs that receive applications in economic, family, and refugee and humanitarian classes, and found a substantial number of applications across all programs remained backlogged at the end of 2022.

The Immigration Department aims to process 80 per cent of applications within its service standards. However, the volume of applications that remained backlogged far exceeded 20 per cent in all programs, with refugees waiting the longest for a decision.

On average, privately sponsored refugees waited 30 months for a decision, while overseas spouses or common-law partners waited an average of 15 months to be reunited with their partners in Canada, compared to the set 12-month service standards. That means, only five per cent of these refugee sponsorship cases and 56 per cent of the spousal applications were processed promptly.

The federal skilled worker program fared worst, with only three per cent of the applications meeting the six-month timeline.

Canada not abiding by ‘first-in-first-out’

The report also found that the length of time backlogged applications spent in the queue increased across all programs — indicating that the department finalized many newer applications over older ones.

In the family class, more than 21,000 applications were finalized within six months of being received, ahead of at least 25,000 older applications that remained in the inventory at the end of the year.

In the provincial nominee program, the time applications remained in the backlog had increased from 12 to 20 months from January to December last year, while for in-Canada spousal sponsorships, the age of the applications rose from 27 to 47 months.

“Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not consistently process applications on a first-in-first-out basis contrary to its operating principle,” said the 40-page report.

That principle was not adhered to, it said, due to other priorities such as the special resettlement program for Afghan refugess, as well as the pressure to complete large volumes of applications to meet the annual immigration targets.

Backlogs vary by country

The report also found differences in the size and age of application backlogs by country of citizenship in seven of the eight audited permanent-residence programs, particularly for government-assisted refugees, federal skilled workers and sponsored spouses who applied from abroad.

For example, in the government-assisted refugees program, more than half of the applications submitted by citizens of Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo were backlogged. By comparison, only one third of Syrian applications were backlogged.

The three countries have the most applications for government-assisted refugee sponsorships, but the visa offices are also under-resourced.

“The department continued to assign application workloads to offices without assessing whether they had enough resources to process them,” the audit said.

The Dar es Salaam office in Tanzania, for instance, had an assigned workload that was five times greater than the Rome office in Italy, even though both offices had a comparable number of staff.

Immigration officials recognized that the visa posts in sub-Saharan Africa were chronically under-resourced but continued to assign files to these offices, which have some of the highest processing volumes for family and refugee programs.

Although the department, with digital applications, has the capacity to redistribute files to let other offices to share the workload, the audit found family-class and refugee-class applications were not transferred out of the Dar es Salaam or Nairobi offices — which both have high workload and application backlogs.

“Department officials told us that they had no plans to transfer backlogged applications to other offices with available capacity, leaving these applicants to wait even longer,” said the report.

“The department did not know whether these offices had the resources they needed to process the volumes of applications assigned to them.”

Canada taking in more applications than it can handle

Overall, the report concluded that the Immigration Department’s ability to reduce backlogs is hampered because officials are taking in more applications than what they can handle under the immigration targets the government has set. (Canada’s annual permanent resident intake grew from 341,000 in 2020 to 465,000 this year.)

Another contributing factor, it said, is the failure of the immigration minister to use his authority “to apply intake controls” during the pandemic.

“From March 2020 through 2021, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada continued to accept applications to its permanent resident programs,” said the report. “But with office closures and travel restrictions, the volume of applications in its inventory grew.”

Despite the launch of a new digital assessment tool and online application portals, the report said the department did not monitor the implementation of its new automated eligibility-assessment tool to determine whether the tool was reducing processing times or to identify and resolve unintended differential outcomes for applicants.

What does the AG recommend?

The Auditor General recommends the Immigration Deportment:

Take immediate steps to identify and address differential wait times to support timely processing for all applicants;

Examine backlogged applications to identify and act on processing delays within its control, and prioritize the older backlogged applications;

Provide applicants with clear expectations of the timelines for a decision; and

Improve consistency of application processing times across its offices by matching assigned workloads with available resources.

“People who apply to Canada’s permanent resident programs should benefit from the government’s efforts to improve processing speeds regardless of their country of citizenship or the office where their application is sent for processing,” the report said

Source: Immigrating to Canada? The system is backlogged and at times unfair, a new report confirms

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How Canada is using AI to catch immigration fraud — and why some say it’s a problem

2023/10/13 Leave a comment

While I understand the worries, I also find that they are overwrought, given that the only way to manage large numbers is through AI and related IT tools.

And as Kahneman’s exhaustive survey of automated vs human systems in Noise indicates, automated systems deliver greater consistency than solely human systems.

So by all means, IRCC has to make every effort to ensure no untoward bias and discrimation is embedded in these systems and ensure that the inherent discrimination in any immigration or citizenship processes, who gets in/who doesn’t, is evidence based and aligned to policy objectives:

Canada is using a new artificial intelligence tool to screen would-be international students and visitors — raising questions about what role AI should be playing in determining who gets into the country.

Immigration officials say the tool improves their ability to figure out who may be trying to game Canada’s system, and insist that, at the end of the day, it’s human beings making the final decisions.

Experts, however, say we already know that AI can reinforce very human biases. One expert, in fact, said he expects some legitimate applicants to get rejected as a result.

Rolled out officially in January, the little-known Integrity Trends Analysis Tool (ITAT) — formerly called Lighthouse or Watertower — has mined the data set of 1.4 million study-permit applications and 2.9 million visitor applications.

What it’s searching for are clues of “risk and fraud patterns” — a combination of elements that, together, may be cause for additional scrutiny on a given file.

Officials say that, among study-permit applications alone, they have already identified more than 800 “unique risk patterns.”

Through ongoing updates based on fresh data, the AI-driven apparatus not only analyses these risk patterns but also flags incoming applications that match them.

It produces reports to assist officers in Immigration Risk Assessment Units, who determine whether an application warrants further scrutiny.

“Maintaining public confidence in how our immigration system is managed is of paramount importance,” Immigration Department spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald told the Star in an email.

“The use of ITAT has effectively allowed us to improve the way we manage risk by using technology to examine risk with a globalized lens.”

Helping with a big caseload

Each year, Canada receives millions of immigration applications — for temporary and permanent residence, as well as for citizenship — and the number has continued to grow.

The Immigration Department says the total number of decisions it renders per year increased from 4.1 million in 2018 to 5.2 million last year, with the overwhelming majority of applicants trying to obtain temporary-resident status as students, foreign workers and visitors; last year temporary-resident applications accounted for 80 per cent of the decisions the department rendered.

During the pandemic, the department was overwhelmed by skyrocketing backlogs in every single program, which spurred Ottawa to go on a hiring spree and fast-track its modernization to tackle the rising inventory of applications.

Enter: a new tool

ITAT, which was developed in-house and first piloted in the summer of 2020, is the latest instrument in the department’s tool box, one that goes beyond performing simple administrative tasks, such as responding to online inquiries, to more sophisticated functions, like detecting fraud.

MacDonald said ITAT can readily find connections across application records in immigration databases, which may include reports and dossiers produced by Canada Border Services Agency or other law enforcement bodies. The tool, he said, helps officials identify applications that share similar characteristics of previously refused applications.

He said that in order to protect the integrity of the immigration system and investigative techniques, he could not disclose details of the risk patterns that are used to assess applications.

However, MacDonald stressed that “every effort is taken to ensure risk patterns do not create actual or perceived bias as it relates to Charter-protected factors, such as gender, age, race or religion.

“These are reviewed carefully before weekly reports are distributed to risk assessment units.”

A government report about ITAT released last year did make reference to the “adverse characteristics” monitored for in an application, such as inadmissibility findings (e.g. criminality and misrepresentation) and other records of immigration violations, such as overstaying or working without authorization.

The report said that in the past, risk assessment units conducted a random sample of applications to detect frauds through various techniques, including phone calls, site visits or in-person interviews. The results of the verification activity are shared with processing officers whether or not fraudulent information was found.

The report suggested the new tool is meant to assist these investigations. MacDonald emphasized that ITAT does not recommend or make decisions on applications, and the final decisions on applications still rest with the processing officers.

Unintended influence?

However, that doesn’t mean the use of the tool won’t influence an officer’s decision-making, said Ebrahim Bagheri, director of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s collaborative program on responsible AI development. He said he expects human staff to wrongfully flag and reject applicants out of deference to ITAT.

Bagheri, who specializes in information retrieval, social media analytics and software and knowledge engineering, said humans tend to heed such programs too much: “You’re inclined to agree with the AI at the unconscious level, thinking — again unconsciously — there may have been things that you may have missed and the machine, which is quite rigorous, has picked up.”

While the shift toward automation, AI-assisted and data-driven decision-making is part of a global trend, immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo says the technology is not advanced enough yet for immigration processing.

“Most of the experts are pretty much saying, relying on automated statistical tools to make decisions or to predict risk is a bad idea,” said Bellissimo, who takes a personal interest in studying the use of AI in Canadian immigration.

“AI is required to achieve precision, scale and personalization. But the tools aren’t there yet to do that without discrimination.”

The shortcomings of AI

A history of multiple marriages might be a red flag to AI, suggesting a marriage of convenience, Bellissimo said. But what could’ve been omitted in the assessment of an application were the particular facts — that the person’s first spouse had passed away, for instance, or even that the second ran away because it was a forced marriage.

“You need to know what the paradigm and what the data set is. Is it all based on the Middle East, Africa? Are there different rules?” asked Bellissimo.

“To build public confidence in data, you need external audits. You need a data scientist and a couple of immigration practitioners to basically validate (it). That’s not being done now and it’s a problem.”

Bagheri said AI can reinforce its own findings and recommendations when its findings are acted on, creating new data of rejections and approvals that conform to its conclusions.

“Let’s think about an AI system that’s telling you who’s the risk to come to Canada. It flags a certain set of applications. The officers will look at it. They will decide on the side of caution. They flag it. That goes back to the system,” he said.

“And you just think that you’re becoming more accurate where they’re just intensifying the biases.”

Bellissimo said immigration officials have been doing a poor job in communicating to the public about the tool: “There is such a worry about threat actors that they’re putting so much behind the curtain (and) the public generally has no confidence in this use.”

Bagheri said immigration officials should just limit their use of AI tools to optimize resources and administer its processes, such as using robots to answer emails, screen eligibility and triage applications — freeing up officers for the actual risk assessment and decision making.

“I think the decisions on who we welcome should be based on compassion and a welcoming approach, rather than a profiling approach,” he said.

Source: How Canada is using AI to catch immigration fraud — and why some say it’s a problem

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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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Ottawa forecasts 1.4 million international student applications a year by 2027, document shows

2023/09/22 1 Comment

Hard to deny the impact such numbers would have on housing, healthcare and infrastructure pressures and the increased numbers of disillusioned students given worse economic outcomes and likely frustration for the majority who will not transition to permanent residency.

But unlikely to convince the denialisms among the various interest groups that favour higher numbers.

Good that IRCC officials are carrying out this analysis:

The number of foreign students applying to come to Canada each year is forecast by the federal immigration department to rise to 1.4 million by 2027, an internal policy document says, which also raises concerns that such growth is “unsustainable.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada forecast the rapid rise in the number of foreign students in a paper last month about establishing a class of “trusted” universities and colleges, which would qualify for faster processing of international student study permits.

The document, obtained by The Globe and Mail, says that from 2019 to 2022 study permit applications for overseas students have increased by nearly 300,000 a year.

“By 2027, volumes are forecasted to nearly double to 1.4 million applications per year,” it says.

The federal document was sent to a select group of universities and colleges taking part in a pilot to establish the proposed trusted-institutions framework.

The IRCC paper forecasts that applications from foreign students will reach 949,000 this year, and just over one million next year. The number is projected to rise to 1.1 million in 2025, 1.28 million in 2026 and 1.4 million in 2027.

It says a recent strategic immigration review – and a continuing review of the international students program – has raised a number of concerns including “unsustainable growth in application volumes, impacting education quality, community infrastructure, and IRCC processing capacity.”

The paper says that the rapid growth in the intake of foreign students “has disrupted processing times” for study permits to enter the country. Meanwhile universities and colleges have become “increasingly dependent” on international students for revenue, in some cases not providing international students with “a positive education experience in Canada.”

It is currently piloting metrics to determine which universities and colleges are eligible to be counted as trusted institutions. To qualify they would have to share data annually with the immigration department, including the number and percentage of international students living in university housing.

Alex Usher, founder of Higher Education Strategy Associates, said on-campus housing is often not the cheapest option and this measure could reward universities attracting the wealthiest international students

Housing Minister Sean Fraser – the former immigration minister – floated the prospect of a cap on international student numbers at the cabinet retreat in Charlottetown last month, saying the number of foreign students is putting pressure on rental markets and driving up costs. Immigration Minister Marc Miller said at the retreat that around 900,000 students are expected to enter Canada this year.

A Senate report on Canada’s international student program, published Wednesday, said that many international students are forced to live in crowded, sub-standard housing, with universities failing to provide them with accommodation, even though they pay far higher tuition fees than Canadian students and inject around $22-billion into the economy each year.

One of the report’s authors, Senator Hassan Yussuff, questioned assertions that international students are to blame for the shortage of affordable housing, saying that many are living in cramped and overpriced accommodation with little protection from avaricious landlords.

The Senate report quoted findings by Statistics Canada that 40 per cent of study permit holders live in unsuitable accommodation compared with 9 per cent of the rest of Canada’s population.

“Housing supply and affordability are a decades-old problem that cannot be solved by putting the burden principally on international students,” the report said.

It said that reducing international student numbers will reduce housing demand although the benefits would vary in different parts of the country and depend on the “tenancy preferences of Canadians.”

The Senate report said 51 per cent of international students settle in Ontario, with 20 per cent in B.C., and 12 per cent in Quebec.

The report added that the number of foreign students coming to Canada could be affected by diplomatic disputes with India and China, the “top international source countries.”

The IRCC, in assessing whether universities and colleges qualify as trusted, will gather information from government of Canada databases, such as on the “rate of adverse outcomes for study permit holders” –including convictions of international students for crimes in Canada. Ottawa will also check the approval rate of study permits to attend an institution.

It will also assess the “average teacher-student ratio” for the most popular courses taken by international students, retention and completion rates, foreign students’ ability to speak English or French, and the proportion of students who transition to permanent residency in Canada.

It says following the pilot, universities and colleges would be able to apply and the trusted institutions system could be up and running by spring next year. Foreign students applying to attend colleges and universities on the approved list could “receive expedited processing for the 2024 academic session.”

Source: Ottawa forecasts 1.4 million international student applications a year by 2027, document shows

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