Richard Kurland | Multicultural Meanderings

Douglas Todd: Chinese interest in emigrating to Canada jumps 28 times

2022/12/15 Leave a comment

Kurland has it right that there is a big difference in interest, based upon web stats, and acting on those interests in terms of applications, as the US interest after Trump’s election demonstrated.

IRCC web stats “immigrate to Canada” show a comparable increase in Chinese interest in Canada, but only about 21 percent (January-November 2019 compared to 2021). However, applications from China were essentially flat from 2019, January-October for the same period in 2021 (2022 numbers have a time lag due to data entry delays). Admissions have also remained flat for the same period.

And of course, the share of China as a source of immigrants has fallen over past years for a variety of factors:

I have been following IRCC web stats for four years now and am not finding any significant correlation with applications and admissions:

China’s most popular internet search engine experienced a 28-times surge in residents looking up the terms “conditions to immigrate to Canada” during the populous country’s severe COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

According to an internal Canadian immigration department report obtained under access to information requests by a Vancouver immigration lawyer, the search engine Baidu saw soaring interest in “immigration to Canada” and “immigration” before it suspended use of the terms in April.

There are other signs this year revealing that Chinese citizens, some of whom have launched protests against the country’s zero-COVID policies, have developed an outsized desire to potentially immigrate to Canada or other Western countries.China’s social media and messaging app, WeChat, noted on April 3that viewing of Chinese videos related to “immigration” spiked by 14 times. The word “immigration” was searched 50 million times in one day, says the Canadian immigration department memo.

As well, Canada’s immigration office in China’s capital of Beijing had the highest participation ever on April 14 for its webinar on gaining permanent resident status in Canada, with more than 400 participants.

This is in addition to a separate internal account from a Canadian immigration department staff member in Hong Kong, who said “Canada remains one of the top countries” for the many who are rapidly trying to depart the city because of pandemic rules, unrest and the “heavy handed political policies” of China.

In an unusually candid memo, an unnamed Hong Kong office staff member recounts with regret how she is having to say goodbye to many of her friends because they are taking advantage of their long-held Canadian passports to permanently move to Canada.

“Whether they are thinking of Canada being a respectful and democratic multicultural society, or their own strengths to adapt with highly transferable skills, robust work ethics and substantial capital, Canada continues to be one of their popular choices to begin a new life.”

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who obtained the documents, said Chinese nationals’ sudden leap in wanting to emigrate to Canada reflects their frustration.

“People in China have basically three options,” he said. They can to try to exit the country, continue to show their loyalty to the Communist regime or complain about their leaders.

“Seeing large numbers of inquiries may be the ‘complain’ option,” Kurland said.

“We see the same in the U.S., when Democrats complain about a new Republican president. Many say they are coming to Canada, but they don’t.”

Indeed, three years ago, 55 jumbo jets from China were touching down at Vancouver International Airport every week.

In October there were only eight flights a week from the People’s Republic, which is increasing its grip on citizens through heightened controls and surveillance.

China’s draconian pandemic lockdowns — which are more strict than anywhere in the world — have reduced travel in and out of the country, with the number of international air passengers across all of China’s airports falling from 74 million in 2019 to 1.5 million last year.

Still, Canadian immigration data show that quarterly permanent resident admissions from China are now higher than at any point since 2015, although the vast majority are from people already in the country.

There was a 15 per cent rise in the July-to-September quarter in permanent resident admissions (9,925) from China compared to the third quarter of 2019 (8,690), which was before the pandemic hit.

There are now more than 1.7 million people of Chinese origin in Canada. Of the 512,000 in Metro Vancouver, the 2021 census says 226,000 were born in China, 137,000 in Canada, 81,000 in Hong Kong and 41,000 in Taiwan.

Despite China’s dramatic 2022 jump in inquiries about immigrating to Canada, Kurland said, “There have not been more applying for permanent residence status because you can’t be expected to be selected unless you have been in Canada studying and working. Permanent resident applications in the economic class rarely work, without studying or working in Canada.”

Students from China this year make up about one in eight of the more than 600,000 people in Canada on study visas.

And a summer survey of 11,000 prospective students across Asia, which was weighted to India and China, found that Canada was their top choice.

Canada retained bragging rights as first-choice destination of 27 per cent of respondents, according to the survey by IDP, an education company. Twenty-five per cent chose Australia, 20 per cent nominated the United Kingdom, 18 per cent opted for the U.S. and three per cent looked to New Zealand.

Canada is especially appealing, analysts say, because it offers foreign students a path to citizenship and, unlike most countries, welcomes them to work up to 20 hours a week while studying. Indeed, this year Ottawa went further and announced that foreign students could work unlimited hours.

That’s caused some labour economists to warn of overloading the market with low-skilled workers. A Statistics Canada study in 2019 almost one third of those on study visas in Canada were not actually enrolled in educational programs.

While there has been a surge among Chinese nationals interested in Canada, a recent report by the Spanish human rights organization, Safeguard Defenders, maintains the regime has been pressuring hundreds of thousands of China’s global diaspora to return to the motherland.

Cases have been documented, including in Canada, in which people that the regime, for whatever reason, considers “fugitives” are intimidated by various means to return to China.

Source: Douglas Todd: Chinese interest in emigrating to Canada jumps 28 times

Filed under Immigration Tagged with China, Douglas Todd, Richard Kurland, web

Why Desperate People Are Suing Immigration Canada

2022/11/25 Leave a comment

Good article and discussion, with good comments by Kareem El-Assal and Richard Kurland, particularly liked Aurland’s contrasting IRCC lack of status updates and application tracking with CRA’s client service:

From January to the end of February, Alejandro Ginares woke up daily at 6 a.m. in order to grab a spot in the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada phone queue.

He went about the business of his day — preparing breakfast, doing dishes and feeding his cat — until eventually, sometimes after eight hours of being on hold, he’d reach the front of the queue and receive a pre-recorded message: “all our agents are busy, try again later.” He’d hang up. If it was early he’d try again. If it was after 3 p.m., when the offices out east close, he’d make dinner, go to bed and start all over again the next day.

While news articles have been filled with stories of long lineups of Canadians stymied while renewing passports, less has been reported on how the pandemic and its knock-on effects have impacted would-be Canadians, whose immigration applications have been left in a backlog that has only increased since the beginning of the pandemic.

In Ginares’s case, he was desperately trying to track down the status of a permanent residency application he’d submitted 15 months before.

Occasionally he’d reach a human being, only to be told that his application was “not in the system.” He was baffled. He had paid the processing fee and had a Canada Post delivery confirmation in hand, certifying that the application had arrived at IRCC. He knew they’d received it. So why wasn’t he in the system?

Ginares eventually reached an agent who promised to help him. A few days later he got a response confirming for certain that his application had not entered the system.

It was then that he realized that IRCC had most likely lost his application.

“It’s awful to be waiting,” he says. “We don’t know if we’re waiting for a purpose or if we’re waiting for nothing.”

Resubmitting his application was risky. It would mean starting all over again. And it would cost another $1,000. He didn’t know what to do.

A geological engineer in Uruguay, Ginares had left his home and family to join his husband, Wendall Seldura, in Canada. The two had met in a cocktail and music bar in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 2017. They’d fallen in love immediately and quickly decided that Canada was the country where they’d spend their future.

Ginares knew that permanent residency processing times can often reach 15 months. But he didn’t think it would take 15 months for the system to even receive his application, or approve a work permit.

Back home, Ginares worked, studied and volunteered. Now he feels like he’s stuck in limbo. “I fight every morning when I wake up to find motivation,” he says.

According to data released by IRCC Oct. 31, 2.2 million people are waiting for approval for temporary residence, permanent residence and Canadian citizenship applications. Like Ginares, 1.2 million have waited beyond the standard time expected for their application.

In permanent residency specifically, there are 603,700 applicants. Only 279,700 of these are being processed within standard times; 54 per cent, or 324,000 applications, are not being processed within the times projected by the agency.

B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix recently hit headlines when he called on Ottawa to halt the deportation of Claudia Zamorano, a hospital worker whose family is facing deportation because their applications have not yet been processed.

Nathaniel Preston, Ginares’s immigration consultant, says that he is seeing long wait times for all his clients. His colleagues report the same. “You exist but you don’t. You’re technically not supposed to be here. But maybe you could be here, if they approve the visa, or they restore your status,” he says.

Yet, despite these backlogs, IRCC has not stopped accepting applications. In fact, they are planning to increase immigration rates. Based on the government’s according to Kareem El-Assal, managing editor at CIC News and director of policy and digital strategy at CanadaVisa. For example, the Express Entry pool is invite-only. They continued to solicit invites despite the growing backlog, only temporarily pausing in December 2020 and then again in September 2021.

This resulted in a huge backlog that IRCC is still wading through today. The backlog is three times higher than it was prior to the pandemic, according to data IRCC promised that it would increase the number of decision-makers for spousal sponsorship applications by 66 per cent.

These measures have been successful. According to data provided to The Tyee by IRCC, between January and October, IRCC made decisions on 4.3 million applications for permanent residents, temporary residents and citizens, compared to 2.3 million decisions in the same period last year.

This has decreased the backlog by a significant amount. According to data on IRCC’s website, in July 100 per cent of applications were beyond standard processing times. By October 2022, 45 per cent of applications were beyond standard processing times.

However, Preston thinks that combatting the backlog through staff shortage and digitalization is not enough, especially if IRCC continues to accept more applicants.

“A fixed timeline for when people have to have an answer needs to be put in place,” he says.

Preston isn’t the only one calling for set deadlines.

“I’ve been after these guides for years,” said Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer who has presented to the parliamentary standing committee on citizenship and immigration and is former special advisor to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada.

According to Kurland, all other branches of the federal government do have deadlines that they must follow. The deadlines come under the Services Fees Act, whereby federal departments must report to Parliament annually on the fees they charge. These reports should also have “performance standards” that outline how long it will take to provide the service.

These performance standards are decided by the federal department itself and they have no upper limit. When standards are not met, however, fees must be returned.

But when the standards were first introduced in 2004 under the User Fees Act, a measure MPs brought in to control federal departments, IRCC successfully lobbied to exempt themselves.

IRCC does have standard processing times. However, these times are only estimates based on how long it took to process 80 per cent of applications in the past. They are not standards that IRCC can be held to.

If IRCC had performance standards, Ginares would have received an accurate estimate for how long his application would take and, should this estimate not be met, he would be entitled to his money back.

The performance standards wouldn’t only be useful for immigrants. IRCC would also have to abide by deadlines given to Canadian nationals applying for services such as passport renewal.

When The Tyee asked IRCC whether they would consider implementing performance standards, a spokesperson for the department said that the IRCC did provide service standards for most types of applications and that its goal is to process 80 per cent of applications within that timeframe.

IRCC did not respond to requests about performance standards, and why the agency does not have them.

Kurland believes the reasons why IRCC does not have performance standards are straightforward. “If you tell people it is going to take five years to sponsor a spouse, good luck with that,” said Kurland. “The public won’t accept that. And the Official Opposition, no matter who it is, will say: ‘How come the government needs five years when we did it in two?’”

Kurland also said that it would cost IRCC money when it failed to meet deadlines. And lastly, standard processing times would disincentivize immigration.

Canada’s economy depends on immigration, with the Bank of Canada recognizing that it plays an essential role in the growth of the labour force: in 2017, over one in four working people were immigrants. This percentage is only set to rise as, according to Statistics Canada, nearly one-quarter of the Canadian population is set to age out of the workforce by 2030.

“If you have accurate information you can make better decisions,” Ginares says.

Had IRCC told him it would take five years to get permanent residency, he says he would have applied for residency from Uruguay, not from Canada.

At writs’ end

After Ginares had waited 13 months, his immigration consultant suggested he find a lawyer, who then suggested he use the last tool at his disposal: the court.

In some circumstances, where an application has far exceeded the standard processing time, an applicant can ask the court to send a “writ of mandamus,” which is an order demanding that the government properly fulfil their official duties. The government office responsible must file a response within 21 days.

On Oct. 26, after his lawyer filed a writ, Ginares finally heard back from IRCC. Confirming his suspicions, they acknowledged they had lost his application.

This confirmation, Ginares says, was good news in a way. It means that he can now resubmit an application and the IRCC will begin to process it immediately. When the new application has entered the system, Ginares can anticipate waiting 14 months for it to be processed.

Filing writs of mandamus is an increasingly popular technique right now, says Kurland. This is largely because IRCC fails to communicate with applicants, lawyers and consultants in a meaningful way.

According to data provided to The Tyee by IRCC, writs of mandamus applications have increased five-fold since 2019. In the 2019 fiscal year, a total of 149 writs were filed. From April 2021 to April 2022, 809 writs were filed. Since April 2022, 709 writs have been filed.

But Kurland cautions that mandamuses are a last resort. Not only are they expensive — filing cost Ginares a $1,000 fee plus $1,600 in legal fees — Kurland says they are also a poor use of court resources.

Both Preston and Kurland think that a better solution would be to update the IRCC’s system so that applicants can have fast, online access to the status of their applications.

“There’s a solid business case for allocating resources into improving what a person can see on their own IRCC portal,” said Kurland.

He compares it to the Canadian Revenue Agency, pointing out that the CRA does client service effectively. “With the CRA, you make a couple of calls, you get your info and you get what you need. Client service is not a priority for IRCC,” he says.

Ginares agrees. Recalling those long days spent on the phone, he says he doesn’t consider the remedy from filing a writ of mandamus a great replacement for genuine client service. While his partner was able to financially support him through unemployment and foot the bill for steep legal fees, many others may not be so lucky.

Ginares estimates that his permanent residency application has cost him between $7,000 to $10,000.

“It’s crazy that you have to bring an immigration consultant, a lawyer and the Federal Court into this just to get a meaningful answer from IRCC,” said Ginares.

But, he says, at least now he knows what his next steps will be.

“I can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. “I just hope it’s not a train.”

Source: Why Desperate People Are Suing Immigration Canada

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Kareem El-Assal, Processing, Richard Kurland, service

New data shows big boost in hiring at Canada’s immigration department. ‘What were they doing?’

2022/11/15 Leave a comment

My sense, given under attention to processing efficiencies, automation and AI, is that IRCC had little alternative but to hire more staff. Whether or not there IT modernization initiative, a longer term project, and other initiatives such as more online applications and tracking, will allow IRCC to wean itself from the “just throw bodies” remains to be seen.

And of course, the government is unwilling to revise its targets downwards to align with its capacity:

Only eight months into 2022, Canada already received almost as many permanent and temporary resident applications it did in 2019 before the pandemic.

After a two-year slump, the engine of the country’s immigration system is running above its capacity in 2019 by 45 per cent and the number of permanent and temporary residence applicants processed through the system is bound to exceed the 3.2 million recorded in the pre-COVID year.

According to never-before-published data, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada currently has 8,104 front-line operations staff, up from 5,583 in March 2019 — with the bulk of the extra work force added since the beginning of 2022. That is despite the number of staff on leave having crept up from 559 in March 2019 to 733 in October.

Those employees who continued to telework have also come down from almost 100 per cent at the beginning of the pandemic to 71.8 per cent last month.

“More people can do more files,” immigration lawyer and policy analyst Richard Kurland told the Star. “Combined with the artificial intelligence decision making system, it should result in greater volumes of decisions.

“You’re having the A.I. do the heavy lifting. You have more humans to take care of files that need that human touch now on track, and they’re on the right path.”

But there are also numbers that immigration officials would rather see in check:

Web forms, a main mechanism for applicants to communicate with the department, rose from 1.61 million in 2020 to 2.26 million in 2021 and 2.42 million as of September this year;

Access-to-information requests, another key tool for inquiries, spiked from 98,042 pre-pandemic to 204,549 in 2021, before declining to 122,016 to date this year;

The number of lawsuits against the immigration department for a court order to compel officials to process a file rocketed from 112 cases in 2019 to 963 in 2022.

Not all critics are convinced the immigration system is back on track.

“Why do we have 45 per cent more people processing applications yet still have these backlogs?” said Vancouver immigration lawyer Steven Meurrens. “I’m curious as to why it feels like processing times just keep getting worse in numerous programs and certain visa offices. I don’t understand.

“Is it glitches with new tech? Are there IT issues at certain visa posts? Are there tech issues with working from home? It’s hard just to know what’s going on from the data because the ‘why’ is missing and the department won’t say.”

Ravi Jain of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association says the ramped-up staffing levels at the department did not jive with the “massive slowdown” in people’s experience with the immigration system. He would like to see a royal commission report into the immigration delays and backlogs.

“What were they doing? I don’t think they were doing much,” said Jain. “They can’t get away with this. It just feels criminal to me because it’s affecting people in so many different ways.”

As of Aug. 31, Canada received more than 2.9 million new permanent and temporary resident applications through the major immigration programs. With four months remaining in 2022, those numbers are certain to push the total above the 3.2 million files in 2019.

Over the time period, immigration officials processed 2.25 million immigration applications — 207,590 permanent and 2.04 million temporary residents, compared to the total of 3,225,130 (235,257 permanent and 2.99 million temporary residents) recorded in 2019.

Source: New data shows big boost in hiring at Canada’s immigration department. ‘What were they doing?’

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Processing, Ravi Jain, Richard Kurland, Steven Meurrens

Canada looks to ease family reunification amid frustrations over ‘super visa’ and lotteries

2022/06/07 Leave a comment

Some of the background of private member bill C-242, sponsored by Conservative MP Kyle Seeback.

Of course, any increase in parents and grandparents, whether single or two-step, undercuts the government’s arguments in favour as increased immigration to address an aging population:

After his father died of cancer, Ken Yu began entering Canada’s annual lottery in the hopes of winning an opportunity to sponsor his mother to come to this country as a permanent resident.

That was six years ago.

The Calgary banker has had no success. Instead, he’s been left despondent as he sees more recent immigrants win the draw and be reunited with their parents or grandparents through Canada’s immigration sponsorship program.

“It’s just so sad. We only have each other. I’m my mother’s only family on earth,” says the 38-year-old Yu, a product of China’s one-child policy, who came to Canada in 2008 as an international student and is now a Canadian citizen.

His only other option is a temporary visa for his 64-year-old mother, Cui Xing Jiang. Such a visa requires a costly private health insurance plan in Canada that serves to cover health emergencies, but nothing more.

“It really scares me if she gets sick here and it’s something that’s not covered in the insurance plan,” Yu says.

The concern over the costs of health insurance — anywhere between $1,800 and $5,000 a year — for visiting parents and grandparents like Yu’s is among the issues that a new bill before Parliament is hoping to address, in a bid to ease family reunification for Canadians who have parents and grandparents abroad.

Dubbed the Reuniting Families Act, Bill C-242 would, if passed, allow a parent or grandparent who applies for a temporary resident visa as a visitor to purchase private health insurance outside Canada and to stay in the country for a period of five years.

It would also require the immigration minister to prepare and table a report on reducing the minimum income requirement that a Canadian sponsor must meet for the visiting parent or grandparent to qualify to stay here for an extended period.

The changes are intended to lower the financial burden and minimize the hassles for Canadians seeking to bring their parents and grandparents to Canada.

Such visitors typically get a so-called super visa — a multiple-entry visitor visa valid for 10 years. The visa allows the holder to stay here for a maximum two years at a time. But in order to get a super visa, they must be covered by a Canadian health insurance company.

First launched in 2011 under the Conservative government, the super visa was introduced in a bid to provide temporary relief to separated family given the ballooning backlog in the parent and grandparent sponsorship program. (At the time, the backlog had reached 168,500.)

In the face of the backlog, then-immigration minister Jason Kenney also stopped accepting new applications for immigration sponsorships of parents and grandparents until 2014 before introducing an annual cap on the number of people invited to apply under the family reunification program.

The Liberal government later introduced the lottery system and, today, Canadians must submit an expression of “interest to sponsor” in an annual draw and only those who get picked can proceed to submit an application.

Sponsors must meet minimum income requirements and applicants with multiple children in Canada can file as many “interest to sponsor” to boost their chances. For instance, for a family of four, including the sponsored parents or grandparents, the income threshold was set for $48,167 in 2020.

Although there’s no more application backlog, the cap and the lottery system have been highly controversial and criticized as unfair because the selection is not based on things such as how much the sponsor needs the help of the parents in providing care and support or how long someone has been waiting.

Dima Amad of the Arab Community Centre of Toronto said the costs of travel and insurance and income thresholds can be “prohibitive” for access to the super visa, which she said some research suggested does not support family reunification because it prevents families from making meaningful long-term plans with parents or grandparents who are not able to stay long term.

“The new bill comes with much-needed improvements. … These are excellent improvements and we believe that it will greatly facilitate the lives and integration journey of many new immigrants,” Amad told the parliamentary immigration committee in a meeting this week.

“But we do believe that these measures should not be a substitute to the pathway for permanent relocations of parents and grandparents.”

Immigration lawyer Vance Langford said there are about 30 Canadian insurance companies offering private insurance for these visitors and authorizing foreign insurance companies could help encourage competition and lower the insurance costs for super visa applicants — between $1,800 and $5,000 a year. But program integrity is a concern.

“We would not object to a limited number of foreign insurance brokers and underwriters being subject to equivalent standards to brokers and underwriters in Canada,” said Langford, who spoke to the parliamentary committee on behalf of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association.

“We also recommend that any authorization of foreign health insurance involve robust information programs to make it clear that only authorized insurance brokers and underwriters are eligible to avoid the victimization of Canadians and their parents and grandparents.”

Immigration policy analyst Richard Kurland said extending the residence period to five years could have unintended consequences. Many of the super visa holders may end up applying for permanent residence on humanitarian grounds after their lengthy stay.

“We’re going to see extraordinary numbers of parents, grandparents stressed, anguished at the thought of forcibly being returned to the homeland after half a decade with their family in Canada. That’s cruel,” he said.

Instead, said Kurland, Ottawa should tackle the management of the immigration sponsorship program.

Currently, about 100,000 Canadians express their interest to sponsor their parents and grandparents in the annual draw for a limited number of application spots (20,000 pre-COVID in 2019 and 30,000 in 2021). The inventory is then emptied and anyone who fails to make it repeats the process.

Kurland said what immigration officials ought to do is stop taking in new “expressions of interests” until each candidate in the existing pool is cleared.

“It no longer is a question of if I can sponsor my family member. It is a question of when,” said Kurland.

Rohan Sekhri, who co-administers a Facebook group of 11,800 members interested in sponsoring parents and grandparents to Canada, said the proposed changes to the super visa program are only Band-Aid solutions for those not getting through the sponsorship process. He said the majority of the visa holders do intend to settle here permanently.

“The current parents/grandparents sponsorship program is luck-based rather than needs-based. We have had members who have been waiting for years and haven’t been able to sponsor,” said Sekhri, 36, whose 69-year-old mother stays with him in Toronto on a super visa. Her health insurance costs $2,800 a year.

How long a super visa holder gets to stay in Canada at a time is something that’s left to the discretion of border officials at the port of entry, he said. They often limit the stay to 12 months. That means, the visitor must pay $100 to apply to extend the stay each time or fly home and return again.

For their part, immigration officials have told the parliamentary committee that there’s no need to bring in changes to the super visa program.

“Under the current super visa, clients can request extensions while here, meaning that they already have the possibility to stay for five years or even longer without needing to leave Canada,” said Michele Kingsley, a director general of the immigration department.

“Allowing foreign providers as proposed by the bill would require consultations with health-sector experts, as well as with provinces and territories to determine which criteria should be included in such a designation scheme. Simply put, there are many unknown impacts of broadening health insurance to foreign providers.”

When questioned by MPs about the social, economic and cultural benefits of the proposed changes in the bill, Kingsley said it’s hard to quantify but believed the super visa and sponsorship programs strike the right balance between short- and long-term family reunifications.

Helen Archer of Victoria, B.C., an immigrant from Russia, said her family has benefitted a great deal from the presence of her mother, Valentina Pitirimova, who has allowed Archer and her husband to work without worrying about costly daycare for their two boys, both under 11.

The super visa, said the 39-year-old accountant, is an expensive option for her mother, who didn’t get invited to apply for sponsorship in three attempts and is paying $320 a month for a Canadian health plan for emergency coverage on top of $420 US to an American insurance provider for regular visits to doctors.

“It’s good that they’re extending the super visa to five years and allowing foreign insurance coverage, considering how important my mom’s presence for my family,” said Archer. “But what’s most frustrating for us is the uncertainty over the lottery system. You have to understand how stressful that is for my mother and my family.”

Daniel Egusquiza, whose brother and sister are also in Canada, said his parents, both accountants, have been visiting since 2000s but only considered settling in Canada in 2016 after their retirement because they wanted to be with their children and grandchildren. They have entered the pool perennially since but yet to get invited to apply.

Meanwhile, the Montreal IT project manager’s father, Luis, 71, and mother Corina, 66, have bought a house and established a new life here despite the uncertainty over their pathway for permanent residence.

Egusquiza said he would like to see the lottery system replaced by a point system similar to the skilled-immigrant programs, in which candidates are awarded points for personal attributes that indicate their potential success. In the cases of parents and grandparents, applicants’ time spent in Canada and their contributions to the family here should all be factored in, Egusquiza said.

The 39-year-old Peruvian worries that there will be a point when his parents will no longer be “insurable” due to their age and health conditions, and have to pack and leave if they still can’t secure a sponsorship spot to stay permanently.

“We need that peace of mind,” said Egusquiza. “For us, our family is everything.”

The immigration committee will continue to hear from witnesses before making a final report with recommendations for adoption of the proposed changes.

Source: Canada looks to ease family reunification amid frustrations over ‘super visa’ and lotteries

Filed under Immigration Tagged with C-242, Kyle Seeback, parents and grandparents, Richard Kurland, super visas, Vance Langford

Immigration Canada acts to end racism, cultural bias among employees

2022/04/04 Leave a comment

Of note:

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is conducting a study to explore potential cultural bias shown by its employees when it comes to processing visa applications at the country’s points of entry, according to a department spokesperson.

The study comes in response to a survey examining workplace racism at IRCC released last year that revealed multiple reports of racist “microagressions” by employees and supervisors.

Participants interviewed said that some of the overt and subtle racism they have witnessed by both employees and decision makers at IRCC “can and probably must impact case processing.”

The department has also made it mandatory for employees and executives to take unconscious bias training, and instituted a requirement for senior staff to take a specific course on inclusive hiring practices as a prerequisite for obtaining their delegated authority to sign financial and staffing decisions.

In addition, said spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald, IRCC is appointing anti-racism representatives in each sector of the department to support the work of a newly-established Anti-Racism Task Force and has created a Black Employee Network to ensure Black voices are heard in driving change.

“We must actively fight racism and continue to work tirelessly to foster a culture of inclusion, diversity, and respect…but actions speak louder than words,” MacDonald told New Canadian Media through email.

MacDonald said IRCC will be hiring an independent firm to do an Employment System Review (ESR). The ESR will identify new solutions in core areas such as people management practices and accountability.

IRCC also plans to release its Anti-Racism Strategy and action plan later this year.

IRCC’s steps to combat racism and cultural bias come in the wake of critics arguing that that’s precisely what is contributing to a growing backlog of visa applications while exacerbating issues of racial discrimination and harassment in the workplace.

Jasraj Singh Hallan, a Calgary-area MP who serves as the Conservative Party’s shadow minister on immigration, told NCM the IRCC isn’t only plagued with racism and cultural bias when dealing with visa applications, but it is also struggling to stamp out racist workplace behaviour.

“I have been asking IRCC for several months now to reveal the number of disciplinary actions and investigations it has taken against employees, but have been unable to get answers,” he told NCM.

“The impact of racism and cultural bias in IRCC is contributing to massive backlogs in visa applications, refugee processing times and increased cost to the taxpayer.” The latest IRCC numbers show there are 1.84 million people waiting on decisions in its inventory as of mid-March.

Even as Canada struggles to address the processing delays, the country’s 2022–2024 Immigration Levels Plan aims to continue welcoming immigrants at a rate of about one per cent of Canada’s population. This includes 431,645 permanent residents in 2022 (an increase of about 21,000 people from its original plan), 447,055 in 2023, and 451,000 in 2024.

Respondents to the survey released last year pointed to the differences in visa refusal rates by country as an indicator that some form of bias must be at play.

The study also showed there’s growing concern that increased automation of visa processing will embed racially discriminatory practices in a way that will be harder to see over time.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) has filed a policy grievance against IRCC on behalf of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU) based on the disproportionate and adverse treatment of racialized members.

The grievance was filed on March 15, ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

“In this case, IRCC has shown they are incapable or unwilling to proactively address issues of racial discrimination and harassment when they arise, such as excluding racialized employees from hiring and promotional opportunities,” said the PSAC.

PSAC and CEIU are seeking several corrective and concrete measures to eliminate discrimination in the workplace and prevent discriminatory practices in the future. The unions are also calling for all affected members to receive compensation for damages.

PSAC is also supporting a Black Class Action Lawsuit brought by 12 federal public service workers, who identify as Black, Caribbean or of African descent.

The lawsuit reaches back 50 years, arguing the federal government perpetuated Black employee exclusion: the systemic practice of limiting skilled Black workers from career advancement opportunities.

The lawsuit has now grown to represent 1,300 plaintiffs, including past and present IRCC employees, who are seeking over $2.5 billion in damages.

Meanwhile, an internal IRCC memo, obtained by Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, shows that taxpayers are doling out between $9,915 and $33,738 depending on the determination of the eligibility of an asylum claim.

“The lower cost is incurred in cases where the asylum claim is accepted at the first hearing, while the higher cost relates to claims which are initially denied, and the claimant exhausts all appeal options and is ultimately removed from Canada,” the memo stated.

“You can expect the processing costs to go up given the increasing backlog,” Kurland told NCM.

“When the government doesn’t put in the necessary resources to process applications properly and in a timely fashion, Canadians end up paying for it anyway,” Kwan told NCM.

Kwan noted that in 2021, 23 per cent of appeals of Refugee Protection Division (RPD) decisions were overturned by the Refugee Appeals Division (RAD), with an additional 8.5 per cent sent back to the RPD to reassess their decision.

The Refugee Appeal Division decides appeals of decisions of the Refugee Protection Division to allow or reject claims for refugee protection. A person whose claim is rejected by the RPD can ask the RAD to review this decision to assess whether the RPD was wrong.

“That’s a very high error rate and this doesn’t include federal reviews which will uncover even more judgement errors,” said Kwan.

Source: Immigration Canada acts to end racism, cultural bias among employees

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with Anti-Racism Task Force, Black Class Action Lawsuit, cultural bias, Employment System Review (ESR)., IRCC, MP Hallan, MP Kwan, Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), Richard Kurland

Immigration Plan 2022-24: Reports and Reactions

2022/02/16 Leave a comment

Expect to see more detailed analysis and commentary over coming days to round out the initial reporting.

Overall, the plan continues the government strategy of growing the economy through growing the numbers of immigrants.

This reflects the various interests of the “immigration industry” and business: more bodies means more consumers, more work for immigration lawyers and consultants, more funding for settlement organizations, more research opportunities for academics etc.

Not surprisingly, no questioning of these perspectives in articles and commentary to date (see my earlier Increasing immigration to boost population? Not so fast.). The government strategy continues to be based on overall GDP growth, not per capita GDP growth and productivity, a long standing issue that governments have tried to address with limited to no success.

The articles below capture some of the aspects which groups and individuals quoted have raised as concerns, but these are all in the context of general suppoort.

In terms of the politics of the plan, unlikely that this will create many issues for the government. The NDP generally supports higher numbers and the Conservatives will likely continue to focus on implementation and administrative issues, given the backlogs and that this is much safer than engaging in a debate over numbers, given their vulnerability to charges of being anti-immigration (unfair IMO but too tempting a target for the Liberals given the Conservatives still wear the legacy of the “barbaric practices tip line” and other ill-thought political messaging).

Given the overall shorter-term perspective of most immigration analysis and commentary, I continue to advocate for a royal commission or equivalent for a more independent and thorough look at immigration policy and programs with a longer-term perspective.

Media articles and commentary to date (nothing negative so far but expect some in more right leaning media and will continue to monitor):

The Star:

Canada plans to welcome more than 1.3 million new immigrants to the country over the next three years to help its economy recover from COVID-19 and to drive future growth.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser’s multi-year immigration-levels plan was announced Monday.
“If we’re not ready to significantly increase our ambition when it comes to immigration, we are going to be in a position where our economy will suffer, and it could put into jeopardy so many of the public services and social supports that make me very proud to be Canadian,” Fraser said.
But the plan comes amid calls from critics for the federal government to first reduce the ballooning backlog of 1.8 million applications piling up in the system as a result of slowed processing capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new plan calls for an annual intake that will reach 431,645 in 2022; 447,055 in 2023; and 451,000 in 2024 — equivalent to 1.14 per cent of the population by 2024.
This year, the number of new permanent residents will include 241,850 from the economic class; 105,000 through family reunification; and 76,545 as refugees and protected persons.
Canada reached its 2021 goal — bringing in a record 405,000 newcomers — largely by granting permanent residence to migrants such as international students and foreign workers who were already in Canada and therefore not hampered by pandemic travel restrictions and border closures.
However, the disruptions caused by COVID-19 here and abroad — and the unexpected Afghan refugee crisis — have created an unprecedented backlog in the immigration system that experts believe will take at least three years to clear.
As of December, there were 548,195 pending permanent residence applications; 775,741 temporary residence applications, including study and work permits; and 468,000 citizenship applications in the queue for processing.
Fraser said he hopes to rein in the backlog through additional hiring and by modernizing processing through new digital platforms.
The new plan will change the composition of the intake slightly this year, with the share of economic and skilled immigrants down from 60 per cent to 56 per cent. The portion of newcomers under the family class will also fall from 26 per cent to 24 per cent, while the ratio of refugees will go from 14 to 20 per cent.
Immigration policy analyst Kareem El-Assal said he’s unsure how reducing the share of economic migrants to Canada is going to benefit the country’s economy, which faces a labour shortage equivalent to nearly one million jobs.
“That’s what they’re trying to tell us. And then you look at the numbers and you see that’s not what’s happened,” said El-Assal, managing editor of immigration news site CIC News and policy director at CanadaVisa.com.
“You don’t have to spin anything for us. Just tell us, ‘This is what we’re doing temporarily. We’re going to be reducing the economic class share and the family class share temporarily for two years so that we can accommodate more refugees.’”
Calling the government plan “ambitious,” Ravi Jain of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association said he was concerned about reducing the permanent residence quota for federal high skilled workers by half, from 111,000 to 55,900.
During the pandemic, many international students have been unable to earn the job experience they need to qualify for permanent residence despite the high tuition fees they have paid. Jain said Ottawa needs an immediate plan to extend their work permits in Canada.
“They’re going to be waiting potentially a few years and they’re going to need the status to be able to buy that time,” said the Toronto lawyer. “There are some major concerns around what to do about the people who are here and who won’t necessarily have a pathway for permanent residence.”
The federal government has devoted $827.3 million over five years to enable the department to develop and deliver an enterprise-wide digital platform, with an additional $85 million to hire staff to reduce backlogs.
But the system hasn’t transformed fast enough to meet the insatiable demand for immigration to Canada.
Shamira Madhany, managing director of World Education Services, said Canada can’t rest on its laurels, as other countries are also competing for skilled talents for their post-COVID economic recovery.
“What Canada has done here is basically saying, ‘Our borders are open for immigration,’” said Madhany. “In terms of our capacity (to absorb immigrants), it’s a different question. We need to make sure we have mechanisms and tools in place to leverage their prior skills and experience. We don’t want highly skilled people to come here to do low-skilled jobs.”
MP Jenny Kwan, the NDP immigration critic, said Fraser’s plan shows a continuation of the Liberals’ Band-Aid approach to systemic immigration problems.
“The government simply cannot continue to shift resources and immigration levels from one stream to another. This pattern of behaviour has and will continue to create further problems and chaos in the system,” said Kwan.

Source: Canada wants to welcome 1.3 million newcomers over three years — but can its immigration system keep up?

Globe and Mail:

The federal government aims to welcome nearly 432,000 immigrants to Canada this year, as a part of a three-year plan to fill critical labour-market gaps and support a post-pandemic economic recovery.
The annual immigration levels plan, tabled in Parliament Monday, projects Canada will admit 431,645 permanent residents in 2022, followed approximately by 447,000 in 2023 and 451,000 in 2024. The majority of the permanent resident spots – 56 per cent – will be designated for immigrants coming to Canada to fill job vacancies this year.
Speaking to The Globe and Mail, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how key immigrants are to Canada’s success, as newcomers fill many front-line jobs.
“When I talk to restaurants, machine shops, health care providers or virtually any other business, I see help-wanted signs in windows,” Mr. Fraser said.
“By launching what is the most ambitious immigration plan in the history of Canada, we are going to equip the Canadian economy with the workers it needs.”
Ottawa says immigration accounts for 100 per cent of labour-force growth and, with five million Canadians set to retire by the end of this decade, the worker-to-retiree ratio will drop – demonstrating the need for increased immigration.
Goldy Hyder, president and chief executive officer of the Business Council of Canada, said the number of job vacancies in the country is near an all-time high and immigration will be a key driver of pandemic recovery. He welcomed the government’s immigration targets Monday, but he said the plan must be supported by increased processing capability and supports for newcomers.
“To help meet these new targets, we urge the government to expand the immigration system’s processing capacity by adding new processing centres, updating outdated IT systems, and increasing recruitment and training of border agents and settlement services personnel. A growing workforce should also be accompanied by increased investments in public services, housing, and infrastructure,” Mr. Hyder said in a statement.
Mr. Fraser said the government recently hired 500 new processing staff and set aside $85-million in new funding to reduce application backlogs.
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan urged the government to introduce special immigration levels to give the 500,000 migrant workers already in Canada a path to settlement and help address the labour-skill shortage.
While the government plans to increase the number of economic immigrants it welcomes to Canada over the next three years, from nearly 242,000 this year to more than 267,000 in 2024, it will simultaneously reduce the number of refugees to whom it offers safe haven. Canada will resettle approximately 77,000 refugees this year, 74,000 in 2023 and 62,500 in 2024. Mr. Fraser said resettlement numbers will gradually decrease as Canada follows through with its commitment to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees over the next two years. More than 7,550 Afghan refugees have been resettled in Canada since last August.
The reduction in refugee-resettlement targets – particularly the government’s plan to accept more privately sponsored refugees than government-assisted refugees – has sparked concern for advocates.
“The responsibility to resettle refugees lies with the government – to reflect that responsibility, the government should resettle more refugees than private citizens. Yet the levels show private sponsors are being asked to do one and a half times as much resettlement as the government,” the Canadian Council for Refugees said in a statement.
Overall immigration levels have grown substantially since the Liberals took power in 2015. Numbers continued to grow until 2020, when Canada only admitted 184,500 newcomers because of the challenges posed by the pandemic. Shuttered overseas visa offices, closed borders, quarantine restrictions and challenges booking flights heavily affected the immigration system.
Immigration numbers rebounded in 2021, when Canada welcomed 405,000 new permanent residents – breaking the all-time record set in 1913. The majority of the newcomers were already in Canada on temporary status, including temporary foreign workers in the skilled trades, health care and technology, and international students.
The government has not tabled an immigration levels plans since October, 2020. It normally announces it immigration targets by Nov. 1, but last year’s plan was delayed because of the federal election.

Source: Canada aims to welcome 432,000 immigrants in 2022 as part of three-year plan to fill labour gaps

Le Devoir

Ottawa espère également atteindre enfin sa cible d’immigration francophone hors Québec en 2023, soit 4,4 % de toutes les admissions, une cible ratée depuis des années selon le commissaire aux langues officielles.

En 2020, 184 606 résidents permanents ont été enregistrés au Canada, c’est-à-dire beaucoup moins que la cible annoncée de 341 000, confirme également ce rapport annuel. Ce nombre, selon le ministre Fraser, est néanmoins un « succès impressionnant compte tenu des fermetures et des restrictions frontalières » dues à la pandémie, y écrit-il.

Pour cette même année, on a compté 326 116 titulaires de permis de travail temporaire au pays, ce qui illustre une autre tendance lourde, soit l’augmentation des catégories temporaires. Ce qui s’appelle le « solde de résidents non permanents » représentait 1,3 million de personnes au 1er janvier 2020, selon des informations communiquées précédemment par le ministère fédéral de l’Immigration au Devoir. Les détenteurs de titre de séjour temporaire, toutes catégories de permis confondues, représentaient ainsi près de 3,5 % de la population totale la même année.

Il s’agissait lundi de la première annonce officielle de cibles depuis octobre 2020. En décembre dernier, le ministre Fraser avait affirmé dans une entrevue au Devoir vouloir être le gouvernement le plus ambitieux de tous les temps en matière d’immigration.

Pour 2021, il estime avoir atteint « cette réalisation historique » en accueillant plus de 401 000 nouveaux résidents permanents, avait-il annoncé par communiqué. La majorité de ces personnes était déjà à l’intérieur des frontières sous un statut temporaire et a accédé à la permanence par divers programmes.

Le record précédent datait de 1913, quand 400 900 nouveaux immigrants permanents avaient foulé le sol canadien. Le pays comptait alors seulement 7,6 millions d’habitants ; cet afflux représentait donc une proportion plus importante de sa population totale, soit plus de 5 %. En comparaison, la cible d’immigration pour 2022 équivaut à 1 % de tous les Canadiens.

Source: Ottawa dévoile des cibles d’immigration encore plus ambitieuses

New Canadian Media

Canada aims to attract about 1.3 million new immigrants over the next three years to help fill critical labour shortages and fuel post-pandemic growth.
Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC) Sean Fraser announced the new targets on Monday as the government struggles to clear a backlog of about 1.8 million visa/citizenship and other applications in the queue exacerbated by pandemic-induced delays.
At the same time, the latest numbers from Statistics Canada show that job vacancies in the country remain high, with 874,700 unfilled positions.
In a statement, IRCC said there are still hundreds of thousands of positions in all sectors waiting to be filled.

Immigrants needed

“Immigration already accounts for almost 100% of labour force growth, and with 5 million Canadians set to retire by the end of this decade, the worker to retiree ratio will drop down to only 3:1,” it said. “This is a clear sign that we have a strong economic need for increased immigration.”
The 2022–2024 Immigration Levels Plan aims to continue welcoming immigrants at a rate of about 1 per cent of Canada’s population, including 431,645 permanent residents in 2022 (an increase of about 21,000 people from its original plan), 447,055 in 2023, and 451,000 in 2024.
“From farming and fishing to manufacturing, healthcare and the transportation sector, Canada relies on immigrants. Setting bold new immigration targets, as outlined in the 2022-2024 Levels Plan, will further help bring the immeasurable contribution of immigrants to our communities and across all sectors of the economy,” Fraser said during the announcement.
To support the new ambitious targets, which follows a record year of 405,000 new permanent residents in 2021, IRCC had earlier announced a plantomodernize Canada’s immigration system to fuel economic recovery and improve client experience.
Veteran Vancouver-based immigration lawyer, Richard Kurland, told NCM that “IRCC is banking on new information technology to deliver an aggressive program that will be faster for applicants and cheaper for government.”
“The objective is to have more people here, in less time, at less cost,” he said.
Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, said “even with full employment, the country will need newcomers to help fill all the jobs available.”
“To help meet these new targets, we urge the government to expand the immigration system’s processing capacity by adding new processing centres, updating outdated IT systems, and increasing recruitment and training of border agents and settlement services personnel,” Hyder said in a statement.

‘Perpetuating problems’

Jenny Kwan, the Vancouver East MP, who also acts as the NDP Immigration Critic, said the government is actually scaling back the Federal Skilled Workers Program by almost 50 per cent by shifting resources and immigration levels from one stream to another.
“The immigration levels released today shows that the government is perpetuating the problems they created when they failed to adjust the levels to accommodate the new (temporary to permanent resident pathway) immigration measure,” she said.
The measure, also known as TR2PR, is a limited-time pathway to permanent residence applicable only to temporary residents currently working in Canada and to their families.
According to a government memo cited by the National Post, the federal skilled workers program was being scaled back because IRCC simply can’t process the applications quickly enough.
It also said the “reductions are due to admissions space required to accommodate the TR2PR stream and the resettlement of Afghan nationals to Canada.”
“This pattern of behaviour has and will continue to create further problems and chaos in the system,” Kwan told New Canadian Media in an email.
The Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association (CILA) said it is pleased with the modest newcomer increase announced today, adding it will give IRCC time to improve its client experience, tackle its backlogs, and make the technological modernizations necessary to better manage the system moving forward.
However, it is calling for IRCC, in conjunction with Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), to immediately expand the list of occupations eligible for premium processing under the Global Talent Stream.
According to CILA, an added support for Canadian employers would be for IRCC and ESDC to waive national recruitment requirements for all occupations processed under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program where labour shortages are well documented by industry.
“By immediately helping employers address their labour needs over the next two years or more, IRCC and ESDC can reduce government red tape that only serves to delay and frustrate international recruitment,” the association said.

A visa as Valentine’s

Meanwhile, IRCC’s Valentine’s Day message on its Facebook site has been met with derision from those in limbo waiting for their visa, PR cards and citizenship documents.
Mahmoud AR wrote “ How about you guys give me a Valentine’s day gift by finishing my 30 month application for citizenship?”
“Please give my wife (a) visa as Valentine’s gift,” said Pargat Gill
Mary Joy Lee responded “Roses are red, Violets are blue, Finish Applications that are delayed & overdue.”

Source: Canada eyes 1.3 million immigrants to overcome labour pains

And among the advocates, starting with CILA:

The Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association (CILA) is pleased with the modest newcomer increase announced today under the new Immigration Levels Plan 2022-2024.
The gradual increase will give Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) time to improve its client experience, tackle its backlogs, and make the technological modernizations necessary to better manage the immigration system moving forward.
The new levels plan is beneficial to families and will provide safety to more refugees. On the other hand, CILA regrets that economic class immigrants will be negatively impacted by this plan as IRCC looks to reduce its backlogs. CILA once again calls on IRCC to share its backlog reduction plan so that applicants know where they stand in the queue.

Economic Class

Express Entry: CILA is disappointed with the halving of Express Entry admissions in 2022 and calls on IRCC to reverse course by immediately resuming invitations to Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) and Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates.
FSWP candidates have unfairly paid the price throughout the pandemic. This has included expired holders of Confirmation of Permanent Residence (COPR) being neglected at the start of the pandemic, FSWP processing being significantly reduced in 2021, and IRCC pausing invitations to FSWP candidates since December 2020.
Welcoming more immigrants under the FSWP is key to supporting Canada’s labour force and economic growth. Temporarily cutting Express Entry admissions will undermine IRCC’s stated goal of strengthening the labour force via immigration.
Ongoing disruptions to the FSWP will also hurt Canada’s international competitiveness as global talent will be forced to look elsewhere due to dimmer prospects for them in Canada over the next two years.
While it is good news that IRCC plans to bring Express Entry levels back to normal by 2024, this will be of little comfort to the many Canadian employers in desperate need of talent to address their immediate labour shortages.
The halving of Express Entry admissions this year will also be of grave consequence to Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates. The pause in CEC invitations since September 2021 is creating significant hardship for thousands of international students and temporary foreign workers who have spent years contributing to Canada’s economy and society, and who now have fewer permanent residence spots available to them. Many such individuals risk losing their legal status in Canada which may cause them to leave the country. This will also hurt Canadian employers and the economy. CILA calls on IRCC to quickly offer bridging permits to those with Express Entry profiles who have jobs, regardless of whether they have received an Express Entry Invitation to Apply. Alternatively, IRCC could re-introduce a one-time extension to Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) holders like it did in early 2021.
Provincial Nominee Program (PNP): CILA is pleased to see that IRCC will be increasing its PNP admissions targets from 80,000 to 93,000 immigrants by 2024. Since its launch in 1998, the PNP has been successful in promoting a broader distribution of immigration across Canada and addressing local labour market needs. The PNP is crucial to regions across the country amid labour shortages caused by Canada’s aging population and shifts to the economy amid the pandemic.
Start-up Visa Program: CILA believes processing times for Canada’s Start-up Visa Program (SUVP) are not globally competitive and is disappointed to see that admission targets remain unchanged under the new levels plan. IRCC has noted that processing times for the SUVP are now up to six years which is far too slow to support an innovation-driven economy.
Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP): The new immigration levels plan is ambitious and is premised on acute labour shortages across Canada. Employers experiencing labour shortages need continued access to international talent to meet the demand for their products and services in Canada and international markets. To complement the new levels plans, IRCC in conjunction with Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) should immediately expand the list of occupations eligible for premium processing under the Global Talent Stream. IRCC should immediately devote resources to applications eligible for two week processing under the Global Skills Strategy (GSS). Pending applications under the GSS remain backlogged by several months thereby negating the purpose of introducing the GSS.
An added support for Canadian employers would be for IRCC and ESDC to waive national recruitment requirements for all occupations processed under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) where labour shortages are well documented by industry and government data. A good practice that can be replicated across Canada is the Quebec List of Occupations Eligible for Facilitated Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIAs). By immediately helping employers address their labour needs over the next two years or more, IRCC and ESDC can reduce government red tape that only serves to delay and frustrate international recruitment.

Family Class

Spouses and Partners: CILA reiterates its call for IRCC to extend its Spousal Open Work Permit Pilot Program to spouses and partners living outside of Canada. It is unfair to offer work permits to inland sponsorship applicants as well as the partners of study and work permit holders, but force outland sponsorship applicants to remain separated or unemployed while inside Canada. Allowing spouses and common-law partners to work would allow these applicants to contribute to the labour market immediately. In addition, CILA hopes IRCC will achieve its goal of returning to a 12-month service standard for spousal sponsorship applications by the end of this year.
Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP): The increase in Canada’s PGP intake over the coming years is welcome and will help to support families across the country. At the same time, CILA encourages IRCC to consult widely on how to effectively manage the PGP moving forward.

Refugee and Humanitarian Class

Afghan refugees: CILA welcomes the Canadian government’s desire to fulfill its international humanitarian obligations by welcoming more refugees. CILA hopes Canada will be able to resettle Afghan refugees as quickly as possible to achieve its goal of providing safety to 40,000 Afghans.

Source: CILA’s Statement on Canada’s Immigration Levels Plan 2022-2024

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Business Council of Canada, Canadian Council for Refugees, CILA, Immigration pllan, Kareem El-Assal, MP Jenny Kwan, Ravi Jain, Richard Kurland, World Education Services

25-year-old internal memo to Canada Revenue Agency predicted foreign money distorting housing market

2021/09/07 Leave a comment

Pretty outrageous, both the initial non-release and the five-year ATIP battle. Kudos to Ian Young of the SCMP for persisting. David Anderson and Jane Stewart were ministers at the time:

An internal Canada Revenue Agency audit concluded 25 years ago that wealthy new immigrants were buying up most of the priciest houses taken from a sample in and around Vancouver while declaring poverty on their tax returns. But the report was not made public until a five-year access-to-information battle concluded recently.
Housing and immigration academics say the study could have warned the public about the scale of foreign money being parked in Metro Vancouver’s residential real estate – decades before the provincial government began taking meaningful action to slow this trend.
During the federal election campaign, all three major parties have proposed various policies to curb international demand for real estate, which has contributed to rising unaffordability in a number of urban centres.
The Liberals and Conservatives are promising to ban foreign home buyers for at least two years. The New Democrats have pledged to tax those who aren’t Canadian citizens or permanent residents with a 20-per-cent levy – the same penalty imposed in British Columbia’s biggest cities for the past three years.
But critics say the parties need to follow B.C.’s lead to capture even more information about property owners so that they can be taxed more equitably and governments can tamp down international real estate speculation.
The CRA’s analysis from October, 1996, was shared with The Globe and Mail this week after its release to Ian Young, the South China Morning Post’s Vancouver correspondent who first requested the information in 2016 after being leaked portions of the internal memo explaining its findings.
The audit focused on 328 higher-end sales in the suburbs Burnaby and Coquitlam, but the study also analyzed a random sample of 6,060 sales from Vancouver and neighbouring Richmond and discovered “similar demographic results.”
Of the 46 houses bought in Burnaby, staff found 72 per cent were purchased by new arrivals to Vancouver who reported an average total family income of just $16,000. In contrast, the CRA’s chart from the audit showed four buyers who were long-term residents reported average family incomes that were tens of thousands of dollars higher.
This income gap between new immigrants and neighbours who had lived there longer was also observed in Coquitlam, according to the CRA’s chart released in the package of documents.
“It should be noted that an obvious large discrepancy exists between the average total family incomes for long-term Canadian residents and newer Canadian residents,” the author of the memo wrote to his CRA boss. “Furthermore, based on lifestyle and average age of these taxpayers, it is likely that many of these new Canadians still have active business activities, but are not reporting all their sources of income.”
Vancouver lawyer Richard Kurland, who has been helping international clients immigrate to B.C. for 25 years, said the analysis proves the CRA failed to catch those hiding their global income while competing for homes on Canada’s West Coast.
“They knew it was happening and did nothing, so the bleeding continued, taxes were not paid, property was subject to speculation and the end result [is] people in Vancouver are paying many more times than they have to for residential property because the CRA did nothing when it was warned by its own employees about what was going on,” he said.
David Ley, a geography professor at the University of B.C. who studies housing bubbles, said the 1996 report could have spurred politicians to address the anomaly of “apparently poor people buying very rich properties” decades earlier. He said the CRA had long maintained that they it would take too many resources to crack down on home buyers hiding wealth abroad, in large part because other countries they lived in were unlikely to release the pertinent tax information.
“It’s very difficult to pursue foreign sources of income – so they didn’t,” Dr. Ley said.
The CRA told The Globe this week that the study intentionally focused on cases where the buyer may have been underreporting their income and, thus, “was not intended to, and should not be, extrapolated to the whole population.”
But large parts of the internal communications around the release of this document were redacted because the agency said federal access-to-information law allows consultations or deliberations between government employees, a minister of the Crown or their staff to remain confidential.
The federal agency said it takes cheating its system seriously and has stepped up audits in the hot housing markets of Toronto and Vancouver in recent years. Still, the CRA said its five-year battle with Mr. Young over the release of this document is “clearly not normal, nor is it acceptable; we are continuing to take steps to improve [our] performance.”
Andy Yan, a housing analyst and director of Simon Fraser University’s city program, said the federal government has a lot of tools – such as home loan data and analysis of social demographic changes in neighbourhoods – through which it can confirm or refute how widespread these investment patterns have been. But, ultimately, he said, the CRA has not effectively enforced the country’s tax rules, helping create an unfair system where foreign capital is stored in residential real estate.
“There shouldn’t be any free parking,” said Mr. Yan.
In 2015, a Globe and Mail investigation into public data – including land titles, tax reporting and court records – revealed a similar pattern to the 1996 CRA study that suggested the typical wealthy foreign family buying Vancouver real estate pays little or no income or capital gains tax. These family homes were priced out of reach for many locals whose taxes pay for public services.
The Globe discovered that one in three multimillion-dollar homes bought in Vancouver areas popular with foreign buyers was registered to a homemaker, student or corporation – one indicator of how the identity of the person who actually paid can be hidden.
When a spouse or child sells a property that is registered in their name, the real investor can avoid capital-gains taxes – because the relative in Canada can claim it was their primary residence, therefore not an investment.
This and other Globe investigations helped increase public pressure on the provincial Liberal government to enact Canada’s first tax on foreign homebuyers. After the New Democrats were elected in 2017, in part on their pledge to further crack down on expanding real estate speculation, B.C. implemented a host of new taxes and demand-side tools.
Mr. Kurland said more provinces need to follow B.C.’s lead in requiring that homebuyers declare their country of residence for tax purposes as well as create a registry for beneficial owners – which will come into full force at the end of this year to make it tougher for people to hide real estate investments behind corporations, trusts or partnerships.
He said the CRA’s current “whack-a-mole” approach to catching scofflaws in the housing market relies on auditors digging for specific information in individual cases, but it will soon be able to use algorithms to scour all its tax information and these twin data sets to better catch those hiding wealth in B.C.
“It’s equivalent of an abacus versus a spreadsheet,” said Mr. Kurland, who added that he saw a “massive selling spree” among foreign owners in B.C. before each of those two policies became law.
Rohana Rezel, a software engineer who advocates for more affordable housing by using software and data to uncover speculators in Metro Vancouver’s market, said the most effective federal policy on this issue would be to blanket the whole country with a speculation tax on all homes.
Then, owners could offset this two-per-cent penalty against what they pay to the CRA each year, said Mr. Rezel.
“If you’re paying income taxes of a certain amount it doesn’t apply to you,” said Mr. Rezel, who immigrated to Canada from Sri Lanka in 2008.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-25-year-old-internal-memo-to-canada-revenue-agency-predicted-foreign/

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Andy Yan, CRA, David Ley, housing, Ian Young, Richard Kurland

Pandemic likely to drive a surge in immigration fraud, border agency warns

2021/06/08 Leave a comment

Not all that surprising:

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to drive an increase in immigration fraud and human smuggling as desperate migrants try to get into Canada, says a strategic intelligence report prepared by the Canada Border Service Agency.

The report warns that economic downturns and increased poverty abroad caused by the pandemic will prompt more people to resort to irregular methods to come to Canada.

“With more people looking to immigrate, there is likely to be an increase in fraud in all immigration streams via the use of fraudulent supporting documentation to bolster visa or permanent resident applications, fraudulently acquired travel documents to be able to board flights to Canada and misrepresentation,” says the report, dated June 2020.

“It is also likely that we may see more downstream immigration fraud once individuals are in Canada, such as an increase in workers without authorization, marriages of convenience, or the use of unscrupulous agents to assist individuals in regularizing their temporary status into permanent residence.”

The pandemic is likely to increase both the number of people seeking refugee status in Canada and the number of economic migrants pretending to be refugees, the report warns.

It’s also expected to trigger a rise in human smuggling, the report predicts.

“With migration pathways likely reduced globally either as a result of restrictive socio-economic conditions or harsh immigration policies, desperation will likely see more migrants increasingly use the services of smuggling networks and more dangerous pathways, which is likely to increase migrant vulnerability and exploitation by traffickers or other criminal groups,” the report says.

“Migrants who have the means will likely engage the services of smuggling networks, likely resulting in the use of more fraudulent and counterfeit travel documents, increased targeting of visa-exempt travel documents, and the use of new transit points and clandestine routes to facilitate the movement of people to Canada.”

Poverty, corruption and inequality

Part of the problem, the report says, is how the pandemic is aggravating economic inequality around the world.

“Economic inequality is likely to exacerbate push factors such as corruption, unemployment, poverty, poor infrastructure, restrictive human rights and violent conflict,” it reads. “These push factors and the desire to seek favorable socio-economic opportunities already drives a significant portion of irregular migration to Canada and consequences of the pandemic are likely to intensify this.”

The report says Canada is one of the largest sources in the world for remittances — money sent back to home countries by people who come to Canada for work.

Judith Gadbois-St. Cyr, spokesperson for the CBSA, said the report is the most recent assessment by the agency. She said the pandemic has affected the number of people attempting to get into Canada through fraud or human smuggling.

“Irregular migration is impacted by the pandemic travel restrictions in place in Canada and around the world,” she said in a written statement. “At this time, asylum numbers remain lower than those experienced before COVID-19. The CBSA continues to assess these trends and the broader impacts of COVID-19 as it plans for a post pandemic environment.”

She said the agency conducts training in fraud detection techniques and immigration fraud involving “consultants, representatives and organizers remains a top investigative priority.”

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who obtained the report under the Access to Information Act, said the report and its warning about fake documents could account for some of the delays applicants for work or study permits have been experiencing.

“That explains why in many key visa processing centres around the world, more scrutiny is given to applications to come to Canada, which takes more time to process, resulting in lengthier processing times because of COVID and its impact on immigration enforcement,” he said.

“So, if you’re delayed for a visa service, that helps explain why.”

Kurland said the pandemic has destroyed the economies of some countries — at least temporarily — and coming to Canada allows migrants to stay healthier, work legally or illegally and send money back home.

“CBSA hit the nail on the head when it comes to a COVID warning for Canadian immigration authorities,” he said.

Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said the report paints a bleak picture of the situation. She said the report focuses more on how to enforce laws than on ways to help desperate migrants.

“It is really distressing how quickly the CBSA analyst goes to, ‘People are going to be in dire situations, they’re going to be fleeing human rights abuses, they’re going to be facing humanitarian need, therefore we must be expecting more fraud and taking action against fraud rather than looking at options that are available to them such as being more understanding of why people are forced to turn to smugglers because they are facing dire humanitarian need,'” she said.

Dench said a few urgent refugee cases have been permitted to come to Canada during the pandemic but her group would like to see the Canadian government again allow the arrival of refugees who have been approved to resettle in Canada.

Source: Pandemic likely to drive a surge in immigration fraud, border agency warns

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Canadian Council for Refugees, CBSA, fraud, Richard Kurland

Canada’s record-setting invitation to immigrants after COVID shortfall an ‘absolute shock’

2021/02/22 Leave a comment

More reaction to the minimal Express Entry score of 75 and essentially opening to all with work experience in Canada. Money quote: “The draw transforms a well-structured and predictable system into a lottery ticket,” said [immigration lawyer Sergio] Karas. “It makes the system look worthless and game-able.”:

If you’re an immigrant living in Canada and looking for permanent residency, this might be your lucky year.

Canada has set a record for the number of skilled migrants invited to apply for permanent residence on a single day, as the government scrambles to make up for an immigration shortage caused by COVID-19 and the resulting travel restrictions.

On Saturday, Feb. 13, the immigration department held its latest draw from a pool of candidates and issued 27,332 invitations — five times more than its previous high of 5,000 people — to hopeful candidates already living in the country.

The news caught immigration experts and applicants by surprise and created a buzz on social media, with pundits tagging it #SaturdaySurprise from Canada.

“It was an absolute shock to everyone. We all thought there was a glitch on our screens and the numbers were incorrect,” said Kareem El-Assal, managing editor of immigration news site CIC News and policy director at CanadaVisa.com.

The plan is not without its critics, however, who say the strategy could open up the program to people with limited qualifications who would have been out of luck had it not been for Ottawa’s attempt to meet its immigration targets in the middle of a pandemic.

Applying for permanent residency is usually a long and competitive process.

Skilled immigrants who are interested must create a profile in a government management system called Express Entry, where they score points for things such as age, language skills, educational attainments and work experience.

The highest rankings are then invited via routine draws to apply for immigration. While an individual typically needs a minimum score of 400 points or above to make the cutoff, the lowest-ranked person invited in the latest round only had a score of 75. (The immigration department posts the results of each draw on its website.)

This latest draw applies to people in what’s called Canadian Experience Class, meaning they’ve worked in the country.

The instance of requirement loosening means some applicants, with scores too low to normally be considered, are now being encouraged to create a profile and try their luck, experts say.

“Between now and the next draw, you are going to have more Canadian Experience Class candidates entering the pool,” said El-Assal.

“If I’m in Canada right now and I meet the minimum requirements, I will be rushing to submit my profile ASAP because there’s a very good chance that I will be invited.”

Given the challenges presented by the travel restrictions and reduced processing capacity, El-Assal expects the immigration department will continue to prioritize immigration candidates from within Canada before it looks further abroad.

Canada had set to bring in 340,000 new permanent residents in 2020, but ultimately only 180,000 landed here, the lowest annual immigration intake since 1998, according to El-Assal.

This year, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino planned to bump up immigration levels to 401,000 in order to make immigration part of Canada’s economic recovery post-COVID-19.

But as the pandemic continues, international travel remains slow, and immigration with it.

“They’ve got these massive (immigration) levels that they have to hit and they took a real beating last year. They thought the border would be more open now but they are not. They’re scrambling to find a way to meet those targets,” said Alberta-based immigration lawyer Mark Holthe, chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s immigration section.

“This was a really wonderful development. So many people have invested so much time and effort in getting here in the first place, whether it’s the hundreds of thousands of dollars that (foreign) students have paid and worked here. They’re paying taxes. They’re contributing. It’s not like they’re on handouts.”

In a news release, the immigration department said 90 per cent of the 27,332 people invited in this round are already living in Canada, with at least one year of Canadian work experience.

“This means they’re unaffected by current travel restrictions and won’t face the same barriers as overseas applicants when gathering the required documentation and undergoing criminality and medical screening,” it said.

“Those invited to apply who are not currently living in Canada will be able to travel once restrictions are lifted.”

However, Toronto immigration lawyer Sergio Karas said trying to meet the immigration target by lowering the bar is a “terrible” way to make policies.

The latest draw unfairly rewards the low scorers, who “took a flyer” and entered the pool, he said, even if they have poor qualifications, poor language skills and poor job prospects while qualified applicants who are still collecting documentation and not yet in the system lose out.

“The draw transforms a well-structured and predictable system into a lottery ticket,” said Karas. “It makes the system look worthless and game-able.”

Since immigration employees are still working from home, he questioned whether the department has the processing capacity for the flood of applications coming from this draw without compromising the processing time or quality of decisions.

Independent immigration policy analyst Richard Kurland said the system is nimble and flexible as it’s supposed to in adapting to the challenging environment under the pandemic.

“Due to COVID, fewer people registered in the system, resulting in a lower pass mark,” he said. “Now, the publicity (of this news) will flood the system with new candidates. You’ll likely see a lot more people registering just in case immigration lightning strikes twice, increasing the pass mark again.”

Source: Canada’s record-setting invitation to immigrants after COVID shortfall an ‘absolute shock’

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Canadian Experience Class, CRS, Express Entry, Kareem El-Assal, Mark Holthe, Richard Kurland, Sergio Karas

Douglas Todd: Canada’s foreign-student policy needs public review, say experts

2021/01/23 Leave a comment

Noteworthy from who the call is coming from, the generally pro-immigration experts. Royal commissions appear to have fallen out of favour given the time involved but nevertheless Canada benefits from those more in-depth reviews:

The public is in the dark about how Canadian immigration policy has been changed to give preference to international students, say experts.

Ottawa should set up a royal commission to look into issues such as whether Canadians agree that foreign students, who tend to come from the “cream of the crop” in their homelands, should go to the front of the line for permanent residence status, says Chris Friesen, who chairs the umbrella body overseeing settlement services in Canada.

Most Canadians have no idea that roughly one in three people approved each year as immigrants — especially during COVID-19-battered 2020 — were already living in the country as either foreign students or temporary workers, says Friesen, who also directs the Immigrant Services Society of B.C., which has provided support to tens of thousands of newcomers.

While Friesen can see the logic of giving some priority to in-country international students as future immigrants, he asks, “What about those you’ve got waiting overseas? They’ve paid their fees. They’re doing the point system and all the rest of that. What do they think when they find out the quickest way to Canada is to come on a study visa or as a temporary resident?”

In the past five years, Ottawa has gone from welcoming about 300,000 immigrants a year to more than 400,000, but Friesen said most Canadians don’t realize that this country also takes in at least that many people every year as studentsor guest workers.

In addition to international students being a possible brain drain on their countries of origins, Friesen said, “the vast majority of international students are of a certain economic status. They have the network of financial resources that allows them to consider studying abroad in a country like Canada.”

Immigrants to Canada should come from diverse economic backgrounds, said Friesen. “Immigration is not about the private sector dictating economic theory. Immigration is first and foremost about nation building.”

Even though foreign students bolster the budgets of Canada’s high schools, private language schools and post-secondary institutions, Friesen said, “I don’t personally believe we have a handle at all on international students.

“It feels like the federal government is just reacting to educational institutions. There isn’t any plan. We might plan for permanent residents, but we don’t plan for temporary residents.”

Canada doesn’t just need educated tech workers, bankers and financial analysts, Friesen argues.
The country also needs people in essential services such as farming and elder care, not to mention plumbing and garbage collection, which he called “valued professions that are devalued in our society.” As for the debate over whether large numbers of newcomers lower the wages of domestic workers, Friesen says he’s not too concerned about that happening.

As chair of the national Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance,Friesen is calling for a country-wide discussion on Canada’s foreign-student policy in the same month that Ottawa has again been more generous than virtually any other country by offering long-term work permits to international students to encourage them to become permanent residents.

This month, Immigration Minister Marco Mendocino announced they could stay and look for jobs up to 4.5 years after graduating.

Controversy also hit Canada’s student program this week when Global TV uncovered how the Immigration Department has in the past decade paid almost $200 million to a private offshore company to process hundreds of thousands of study-visa applicants. The company has been based in a tax haven in Mauritius, off the coast of Africa, and is backed by a Chinese state-controlled investment fund. The news is raising alarms over privacy.

Such debate is starting to swirl at the same time that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to the tightening of Canada’s borders, has reduced the number of people obtaining permanent resident cards. An estimated 280,000 people were set to receive permanent resident status in Canada in 2020 compared to 340,000 in 2019, according to figures provided by a UBC geography professor, Daniel Hiebert.

The number of immigrants to Canada has dropped since COVID-19 tightened border controls in March, 2020. And a large portion of those who did receive permanent resident status were already in the country as students or guest workers. (Source: UBC prof. Dan Hiebert. Note: CEC stands for Canadian experience class, FSW for federal skilled worker program and FST for federal skilled trades class. PNP stands for provincial nominee program).

With some border restrictions expected to continue, both Hiebert and Friesen doubted that Mendocino will be able to reach his expanded target of more than 400,000 immigrants a year through to 2023. That’s more than 60 per cent higher than the 250,000 taken in in 2015, when the Liberals were elected.

There’s an additional problem with foreign-student policy, which contributes to its complications and unintended consequences.

That is, the federal government’s decision to allow an almost unlimited number of international students into Canada is setting up many for disappointment when they later apply for permanent resident status, say Friesen and Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland.

By having more than 600,000 international students in the country in any normal year, Canada has been building up far too big a pool of people who will be highly qualified for immigration status, say the experts. Not every student who wants to will be able rise to the top of the immigration system’s points-system competition, which has an annual cut-off point.

Vancouver-based Lorie Lee, who provides services to some of Canada’s hundreds of private language schools, has also pointed to how entire families around the world are pinning their hopes on young offspring eventually getting permanent resident status in Canada and then sponsoring relatives.

“Families are chipping in large amounts of money to pay for the education abroad of their child because they’re buying their own immigration futures,” Lee said, acknowledging that failure can be devastating.

While the migration specialists generally support large-scale immigration to Canada, Friesen wants a royal commission because he believes the public has a right to provide much more input on high-impact migration policies that always get set behind closed doors in Ottawa.

A Nanos Research poll in October showed only 17 per cent of Canadians want more immigrants, with 36 per cent seeking fewer and the rest hoping rates stay the same. The political decisions being made now about permanent and temporary newcomers coming into the country, Friesen said, are “going to fundamentally change Canada.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Canada’s foreign-student policy needs public review, say experts

Filed under Immigration Tagged with Chris Friesen, Dan Hiebert, Douglas Todd, immigration levels, international students, Richard Kurland

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Douglas Todd: Canada’s foreign-student policy needs public review, say experts

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