Todd: Quixotic Trudeau finally getting pushback over asylum-seeker chaos

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Inevitable although most asylum seeker and refugee stakeholders remain largely in denial:

Reality is teaching some important lessons to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about flirting with the ideal of virtually open borders. So are Canada’s premiers and the public.

Particularly in regard to asylum seekers.

For months B.C. Premier David Eby and Quebec Premier François Legault have been almost frantically trying to send a message to Trudeau and his childhood friend, Immigration Minister Marc Miller, that they should no longer indulge in their romantic rhetoric of the past.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada,” Trudeau told the world on Twitter/X on Jan. 28, 2017.

It was the day after newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning refugees from Muslim-majority countries. Trump had also proposed the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Trudeau promised to be their saviour.

Even though Eby and Legault are among the most bold in their pushback, they haven’t been alone in trying to educate Trudeau about the costs, in public dollars, of such grandstanding on asylum seekers.

As with the categories of guest workers, international students and immigrants under Trudeau, the number of refugee claimants has soared during his nine-year-old Liberal regime.

There are now 363,000 asylum claimants in the country, according to Statistics Canada — double two years ago.

A couple of years ago most claimants were walking across the U.S. border into Eastern Canada, which U.S. President Joe Biden last year helped to tighten up.

So now most arrive at airports in Toronto and Montreal, and to some extent Calgary and Vancouver, particularly from Asia. They come in  legally with study or travel visas and then make their claims after leaving the airport, saying they’re escaping various forms of persecution.

It normally takes about two years, and often longer if there is an appeal, for the refugee board to research backgrounds and make a ruling on a case, says Anne Michèle Meggs, a former Quebec immigration official who now writes independently on the subject.

This year the average number of asylum claims made per month in B.C. has jumped to 640 — up 37 per cent compared with last year, says Meggs.

B.C. has the third largest intake of asylum claimants in the country. Most still go to Ontario, where she says average monthly claims have leapt by 53 per cent, or Quebec, where they’re up 20 per cent.

Canada’s premiers have been telling Trudeau for the past few months that, regardless of the validity of their assertions, asylum seekers cost taxpayers a great deal of money.

Most arrive with no financial means. And while they wait for their cases to be evaluated to see if they get coveted permanent resident status, federal and provincial agencies often provide social services, housing, food, clothing, health care, children’s education and (in Quebec) daycare.

Stories of an out-of-control refugee system are likely contributing to fast-changing opinion poll results. Last week Leger discovered 60 per cent of Canadians now think there are “too many” newcomers. That’s a huge shift from just 35 per cent in 2019.

It’s the highest rate of dissatisfaction in decades — based in part on demand pressure on housing and infrastructure costs. The negative polling result is consistent across both white and non-white Canadians.

In response to complaints out of Quebec, Trudeau has this year coughed up $750 million more for that province to support refugee claimants who arrived in recent years, mostly at the land border. Last year Quebec dealt with a total of 65,000 claims and Ontario with 63,000, with the largest cohorts from Mexico and India.

But B.C., as Eby is telling anyone who will listen, has received no dollars from Ottawa. The premier described how “frustrating” it is for B.C. to “scrabble around” for funds in the province, where housing is among the most expensive in the world, while Quebec gets extra.

“Our most recent total for last year was 180,000 new British Columbians,” Eby said last month, including asylum seekers among all international migrants to the province. “And that’s great and that’s exciting and it’s necessary, and it’s completely overwhelming.”

Eby didn’t even publicly mention the increasingly bizarre anomaly, based on the three-decades-old Quebec Accord, which each year leads to Quebec getting 10 times more funding than B.C. and Ontario to settle newcomers.

Postmedia News has found Metro Vancouver’s shelters are being overwhelmed by the near-doubling of asylum seekers in B.C. in the past year.

The Salvation Army, which operates 100 beds in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, said that since last summer, the proportion of refugee claimants seeking shelter has climbed to about 80 per cent. Meanwhile, about 60 per cent of beds at the Catholic Charities Men’s Shelter in Vancouver were occupied by refugee claimants. Shelters are predominantly funded by taxpayers.

Government statistics show B.C. is now home to 16,837 asylum claimants, says Meggs. That doesn’t include the 5,300 who last year arrived in the province on a more orderly track as government-assisted refugees.

In an article in Inroads magazine, a social policy journal, Meggs says her ”jaw dropped” when Trudeau said in April the number of temporary immigrants, including asylum seekers, was “out of control” and “growing at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb.”

The cognitive dissonance, she explained, is because Trudeau’s government is entirely responsible for the system spinning out-of control since 2015 — and not only in numbers, but in selection criteria, or lack thereof.

Trudeau has admitted chaos particularly characterizes the dilemma with international students, whose numbers have tripled under his reign to 1.1 million. Many are now claiming asylum. B.C. has 217,000 foreign students in post-secondary institutions and another 49,000 in kindergarten-to-Grade-12 programs.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland is among those suggesting it would be best if Canada processed about 50,000 refugee claimants a year, since it doesn’t have absorptive capacity for more — like the 144,000 who applied last year.

One big problem is the government knows little or nothing about a lot of asylum seekers, say Kurland and Meggs (who generally shares the centre-left leanings of her brother, Geoff Meggs, former chief of staff to NDP Premier John Horgan.)

The immigration department’s ignorance is in part because many make their claims online. Officials don’t even know where tens of thousands live. Meanwhile, Meggs laments, countless claimants are both aided and exploited by people smugglers, landlords and underground employers.

Meggs doesn’t really know how Ottawa is going to get things under control. And, if Trump is re-elected in November and follows through on his vow to get rid of millions of undocumented migrants, it’s virtually guaranteed many will head north to Canada, trying to find ways to pass through what Meggs describes as an incredibly long and understaffed border.

Even though Meggs isn’t optimistic about the future of asylum-seeker policy in Canada, at least the premiers and public are making noises. The thing is, given the Liberals’ defensiveness, it’s just far too soon to tell if their criticism will inspire not empty words but authentic change.

Source: Quixotic Trudeau finally getting pushback over asylum-seeker chaos

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Douglas Todd: Canada should warn guest worker, student applicants they’re taking a big gamble

2024/06/26 Leave a comment

Good comments by Kurland, Skuterud and Lee:

….Their plight is the direct fault of Ottawa, say migration specialists.

“Over the past four years the number of people with temporary status in Canada has skyrocketed” because of an executive decision from the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, says Richard Kurland, a Vancouver immigration lawyer.

“So there is now a chicken in the python problem,” he said.

“People with study permits, and then post-graduate work permits, who can’t qualify for permanent resident status face taking an airplane ride home in shame and poverty. Or they’ll find a way to stay.”

Kurland expects to see “increasing trends of marriages of convenience, refugee claims and applications for humanitarian and compassionate relief.”

A sign of what’s to come might have already arisen at Seneca College in Toronto, where asylum claims from international students increased from 300 in 2022 to almost 700 in 2023. At Kitchener’s Conestoga College, claims jumped from 106 to 450 during that same period.

University of Waterloo economics professor Mikal Skuterud, a specialist in labour, said “lots of non-permanent residents in Canada are seeing their permits expire and the government is worried that large numbers have no intention of leaving the country.”

The Liberal government created the predicament a few years ago, said Skuterud, when it signalled to the world, particularly those with low skills, the easiest way to become a citizen of Canada is to show up as a temporary resident.

“For migrants, Canada’s immigrant selection system now looks like a lottery, in which a work or study permit is the ticket. That’s a big problem. And it wasn’t like this before 2021.”

The Liberal government made the mistake of dismantling the country’s skills-based immigration system because of a “post-pandemic obsession with labour shortages, which is economic nonsense fuelled by corporate Canada,” Skuterud said.

George Lee, an immigration lawyer in Burnaby, said the “federal government created this problem: They’ve brought in too many people. The government wanted to address labour shortages. But now they say,  ‘It’s too much!’ In effect the government is blaming itself.”

Last week, StatCan reported 2.8 million temporary residents in Canada, comprising a record 6.8 per cent of the population. That’s up from 3.5 per cent two years ago.

More than one million are foreign students, most with work permits. Others are classified as “temporary foreign workers” or “international mobility” workers. Another 360,000 are asylum claimants.

In light of Immigration Minister Marc Miller promising this spring to reduce the number of study visas, partly in response to the pressure on housing prices and social services, Kurland said Canada should warn would-be migrants they’re taking a big gamble.

“They now face a loss of their significant investment in time and money. The problem is that the majority of people are unaware that every (newcomer) takes the risk that Canada’s immigration regulations may be changed at any time,” said Kurland, who publishes the newsletter, Lexbase, which previously reported on how Canada’s border services are better tracking when people actually exit the country.

Canada’s problem with an influx of temporary residents is different from what’s facing the U.S. and Europe. Those regions have experienced waves of millions of undocumented migrants. But, for the most part, Canada has explicitly welcomed the record flow of newcomers, most of whom are unskilled.

Skuterud questions the immigration minister’s May announcement that he would like to reduce the number of temporary residents in Canada simply by turning them into permanent residents, particularly through the provinces’ so-called nominee programs.

“The irony of all this is that the government is providing more ad hoc openings to permanent residency to relieve the bulging non-permanent population.” It’s thereby “inadvertently” encouraging more people to start in Canada on a temporary basis with the dream of staying forever, he said.

The surge of temporary residents has not only exacerbated Canada’s housing crisis, Skuterud said rapid population growth, almost entirely from international migration, correlates with Canadian wages staying stagnant.

Lee, who came to Canada on a study visa from China in 1992, supports Canada’s efforts to bring high numbers of international students to the country, saying they’re primed to become engaged citizens since they have learned the culture, to speak English or French, and have developed Canadian-based job skills.

The problem, Lee said, is that when Ottawa tried to address a perceived labour shortage, it went too far and embraced too many newcomers at once. “We need a more balanced approach.”

Kurland suggests Ottawa adopt a “consumer protection” model to more honestly process people who want to move to Canada.

Canada’s immigration department, he said, should ask people who apply online for temporary residency: “If you are planning to possibly immigrate to Canada, do you acknowledge that your plan may fail if Canada immigration law and regulations were to change?”

Skuterud offers a different way forward. He says Ottawa has recently been over-promoting a “two-step immigration” scheme that pushes aspiring immigrants to first enter the country on a temporary basis.

He would like the government to return to emphasizing the more traditional economic-class pathway to permanent resident status, which relied on a transparent, above-board ranking system to select candidates.

Source: Douglas Todd: Canada should warn guest worker, student applicants they’re taking a big gamble

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Canadian immigration asks medical worker fleeing Gaza if he treated Hamas fighters

2024/05/20 Leave a comment

Sigh… Good comments by Kurland and Waldman:

….The federal Immigration Department said that an interview with its minister, Marc Miller, was not possible. In an emailed statement, spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald said visa applicants may be asked additional questions about their employment and travel history, and their online presence, as part of Canada’s screening process.

MacDonald declined to comment on why it asked a medical worker about whom they had treated, citing privacy reasons.

Canada lists Hamas as a terrorist group, and Canada has the right to screen visa applicants for possible security threats, said Lorne Waldman, a Toronto-based lawyer who wrote a widely used textbook on Canadian immigration law.

“But this type of question is completely unacceptable,” Waldman said in an interview. “If there was a shootout in Toronto between members of a gang, a doctor wouldn’t stop to ask whether a person was a gang member before they treated them.”

Canada also cannot ask such questions of a visa applicant strictly for intelligence-gathering purposes, he said.

Richard Kurland of Lawyers for Secure Immigration, a group urging the government to ask pointed questions related to Hamas and terrorist activities, said he rejects the question on two grounds. One, because it only targets Hamas and not other terrorist groups operating in Gaza, and two, because it’s “problematic,” he wrote in an email.

“Even murderous terrorists deserve medical treatment,” he said.

Source: Canadian immigration asks medical worker fleeing Gaza if he treated Hamas fighters

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Asylum claims by international students have skyrocketed since 2018, figures show

2024/04/23 Leave a comment

Good collection and analysis of the data, showing the extent of the abuse of study permits, with good comments by Earl Blaney and Richard Kurland, among others. Another unfortunate signal that the Canadian immigration system has lost its way and the need for corrective action, which the Liberal government has initiated:

Asylum claims by international students have risen more than 1,500 per cent in the past five years, figures obtained by The Globe and Mail show, as experts warn that the study-permit system is being exploited as a way to enter and remain in Canada.

The sharp increase is particularly acute at colleges, where claims at some schools have climbed in excess of 4,000 per cent since 2018. Students at major universities, however, tend to lodge fewer claims than at colleges, the figures show.

The increase in asylum claims coincides with a steep rise in the number of international students arriving here over the past five years, which the government has now taken steps to reduce, partly to ease pressure on housing.

In January, Immigration Minister Marc Miller imposed a two-year cap on international study-permit applications to curb the rapid growth in foreign students entering Canada.

Figures from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, obtained by The Globe, show that in 2018 there were 1,515 claims for asylum among international students, with the number rising to 25,465 in 2023.

The IRCC data on asylum claims at each college and university have not been published.

Earl Blaney, a licensed immigration consultant from London, Ont., said it was easier for people from some countries to enter Canada by obtaining a study permit than a visitor’s visa, as they have a better chance of being allowed into the country if they possess the right credentials to study here.

“To effectuate a front-of-the-line claim for refugee status, you need to be in Canada. The issue is that there is exploitation happening using a legitimate study-permit framework to legitimize entry,” he said. “Some immigration consultants are encouraging students to claim asylum to stay.”

At many colleges, the increases in asylum claims are significant. At Seneca College in Ontario, which offers courses ranging from accounting to civil engineering and fashion, there were 45 asylum claims in 2018, and 1,135 in 2023 – an increase of 2,400 per cent.

At Niagara College, the number of asylum claims jumped to 930 in 2023, from 20 in 2018, a rise of 4,550 per cent. At Conestoga College, there were 25 asylum claims among 6,000 study-permit holders in 2018. Five years later, there were 665 asylum claims among the 81,335 permit holders.

At Cape Breton university in Nova Scotia, there were 15 asylum claims in 2018. That increased to 665 asylum claims last year. And at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, there were only 20 asylum claims by students in 2018, and 700 in 2023.

The numbers are less pronounced at universities. For example, only 35 international students at McGill University, compared with five in 2018, lodged claims for asylum last year, according to the IRCC figures. Fifty-five students at the University of Toronto applied to stay in Canada as a refugee, up from 10 five years ago.

Toronto lawyer Vaibhav Roy said it was “common knowledge amongst the legal community” that students who would not have the scores required for permanent residence – with steep competition for express entry – have been claiming asylum to try to stay in Canada.

“A lot of immigration lawyers are telling them to file refugee claims to stay in the country,” he said. “It’s a last strategy to keep staying here.”

Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said a lot of international students had been promised by consultants working abroad that a study permit was a route to permanent residence, which is not always the case.

“Where does that leave them? Return home poor and in embarrassment, or claim refugee status, which gets them another three to four years,” he said, adding that they could then qualify for a work permit.

Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said many international students claimed asylum while here because the situation in their home countries changed.

He said some from Haiti studying in Quebec have claimed asylum as civil order has broken down in the Caribbean country, which has been ravaged by gang violence, and that many asylum claims have been lodged by Indians who have seen fundamentalists target particular ethnic groups.

In the two-year cap imposed in January, IRCC allotted a limited number of study permits to provinces, which they could then allocate to postsecondary institutions.

Figures from the Ontario government show that public colleges are being allocated far more study permits than public universities, this year, while private colleges have been squeezed out.

Ontario is awarding 35,788 study permits to public universities, including Toronto and Carleton in Ottawa, and 186,167 to public colleges.

Seneca College has been allocated 20,388 study permits, compared with 3,362 for the University of Ottawa this year. The University of Waterloo has been allotted 1,212 study permits while Conestoga College has been allocated 19,885.

Queen’s University only has 749 permits, while Fanshawe College of Applied Arts and Technology has 16,752. The University of Toronto has been allowed 6,256 study permits and Niagara College 9,516.

Conservative Immigration critic Tom Kmiec criticized the government for not acting earlier to deal with rising asylum claims among international students.

“Instead of acting immediately when they saw worrying trends in asylum claims by international students, they tried to ignore the problem for years until it was too late,” he said.

This month’s federal budget detailed $1.1-billion over three years for municipalities and provinces to help meet the rising cost of housing asylum seekers, including those fleeing war-torn countries. It followed complaints, particularly from Quebec, that they lack funds to accommodate the steep rise in asylum claimants.

Some asylum seekers have been living in shelters for homeless people or on the streets, with many housed in hotel rooms while their claims are processed.

The budget also earmarked $141-million for Ottawa to pay for temporary lodging for asylum claimants, who cannot be accommodated because provincial places are full.

Michael Wales, director of communications at Niagara College, said he did not want to speculate on whether the reduced number of study permits this year would translate into fewer asylum claims.

“Providing advice or support to students contemplating an asylum claim is beyond the scope of our licensed international student advisers,” he said. “If asked, our advisers would refer the student to a community agency that is qualified to offer that type of advice or support.”

Source: Asylum claims by international students have skyrocketed since 2018, figures show

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Most immigrants with deportation letters are still in Canada, CBSA figures show

2024/02/14 Leave a comment

As Raj Sharma pointed out on X, “Overstay often receive “voluntary departure orders” which are not removal orders and many that receive the former can and have regularized status (in Canada marriage/common law, refugee claim, H&C, etc).” So numbers likely overstated and it would be helpful to have a breakdown between “voluntary” and “mandatory” departure orders:

Most people living in Canada who have been sent deportation letters in the past eight years are still in the country, according to official figures disclosed by the Canada Border Services Agency.

The figures show that 14,609 people were sent letters informing them they are facing deportation between 2016 and May last year.

But 9,317 of those were still living in Canada last year, including 2,188 people sent deportation letters in 2016 and 2017.

Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec, who received the figures in an answer to a parliamentary question he asked last May, said they suggest a lack of enforcement. He said they are a symptom of a “broken immigration system” and are contributing to an erosion in public confidence.

The figures show that 3,087 people – fewer than a quarter of people sent deportation letters since 2016 – have been removed from Canada….

Source: Most immigrants with deportation letters are still in Canada, CBSA figures show

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Douglas Todd: Ottawa insider warns about immigrant-investor schemes – Vancouver Sun

2024/01/20 Leave a comment

Wise warning (disclosure: I am friends of some of those quoted):

An adviser within Canada’s immigration department is warning about the dangers of entry programs that favour entrepreneurs, given the failure of earlier initiatives.

The internal cautions come at the same time the immigration department, which has been under fire from top bank economists for damaging the economy by bringing in a record 1.25 million permanent and temporary residents in a year, is expanding another program that gives preference to would-be entrepreneurs.

The internal government memo, obtained by Vancouver lawyer Richard Kurland under an access-to-information request, reveals how an adviser to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) warned that a variety of earlier immigrant-business programs suffered widespread abuse — resulting in a trivial number of new businesses being opened in Canada, and other problems.

The defunct schemes that targeted wealthy foreign nationals, which the correspondents generally refer to as “business-class programs,” opened the gates to a flood of foreign capital moving into Canadian housing, says the adviser. That raised prices, especially in cities such as Vancouver and Toronto. In addition, the internal email thread alerts decision makers to the way many entrepreneur immigrants ended up paying low amounts of income tax.

The in-house memo comes to light in the same month the Canadian Press reported the IRCC was internally warned two years ago that increasing immigration levels would harm housing affordability and services. A Nanos poll also finds support for migration has in less than a year plunged 20 percentage points, with 53 per cent now wanting fewer immigrants.

The group email shared by top immigration department officials, titled “The strange story of Vancouver,” reveals just how badly things went with the earlier schemes, specifically the longstanding immigrant-investor and entrepreneur programs, which were poorly monitored.

The email thread shows that senior officials in March of last year were working “under the radar” to expand similar business-class schemes, particularly the so-called Start-Up Visa (SUV) program, to welcome more would-be entrepreneurs into the country who have the “potential” to start a new business.

However, when the directors sought advice from Daniel Hiebert, a former UBC geography professor who is now working in the department’s strategic planning section, he said the earlier programs led to only 15 per cent of business-class immigrants actually starting a business.

“Ouch,” Hiebert says in the email, explaining how most of the business-class newcomers failed to start a new company even though their status as permanent residents was supposedly contingent on it.

The Conservatives disbanded the immigrant investor and entrepreneur programs in 2014, openly saying the people who came in through them were generally not having a long-term positive impact on the country, not bringing in significant investment capital for business, had low ability in Canada’s official languages, were tending not to stay in the country, and were paying far lower taxes than the average skilled worker.

Even many of those entrepreneurs who did begin a business through the old program dropped it after two years, said Hiebert. “They started businesses to meet requirements and then later let them go.”

Hiebert said, as far as he knows, not one of those entrepreneur-class immigrants ever had their permanent resident status revoked.

Furthermore, Hiebert explained how many of those business-class immigrants who bought expensive houses in the city tended to pay low mortgages and low income taxes.

“This is still the case,” Hiebert wrote. “The story is that many of the residents of these areas came through business-class programs with the intent to retire and live a comfortable lifestyle.”

After initially transferring their money out of their country of origin, typically somewhere in East Asia, Hiebert wrote, most purchased a house “along with a Mercedes, Audi or whatever. And then life is lived quite simply, on a small budget and with little owing in terms of income tax. The kids get to go to UBC or SFU while paying domestic fees, which is a big bonus.”

Hiebert concludes his March, 2023, memo by saying, “I think it’s time to review the economic outcomes of the Start-Up Visa program and I suspect they will show more of the same.”

At one point in the email thread, Umit Kiziltan, director general of the IRCC, said the “burning questions” that Hiebert raised required the “outmost (sic) attention” while the department evaluates whether to expand the Start-Up Visa program and others aimed at wealthy immigrants.

Also included in the thread are Maggie Pastorek, director of policy, and James McNamee, senior director in the economic immigration branch.

The group email includes a discussion of a study covered in a Postmedia article from 2022, which shows how UBC business professor Thomas Davidoff and others discovered the owners of Greater Vancouver homes with a median value of $3.7 million pay income taxes of just $15,800 — which is exceedingly low for North American cities.

“Most luxury homes in Greater Vancouver appear to be purchased with wealth derived from sources other than earnings taxed in Canada,” said Davidoff’s study, which confirmed earlier research by Statistics Canada and Hiebert himself.

Several years ago, StatCan and Hiebert found the average value of a detached house bought by more than 4,400 millionaire immigrants who came to Metro Vancouver under the investor program was $3.2 million. That compared to an average of $1.5 million for a Canadian-born owner.

While working at UBC, Hiebert’s studies also found a correlation between neighbourhoods with large foreign-born populations and neighbourhoods that appear to have unusually low taxable incomes, despite their inflated housing prices, such as Richmond and Vancouver’s west side.

Based on the documents provided in response to an access-to-information request by Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, it is not clear how the internal discussion affected later decisions the Liberal government made about its Start-Up Visa program

Last year, however, Ottawa scaled up the annual intake of the Start-Up Visa program from 2022, when it offered 1,000 spots. The program’s intake rose to 3,500 last year and is set to bring in 5,000 this year and 6,000 in 2025.

Immigration department officials did not respond by deadline.

Source: Douglas Todd: Ottawa insider warns about immigrant-investor schemes

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Immigration Minister urged to crack down on international student ‘no shows’ at colleges

2024/01/19 Leave a comment

All the negligence on the part of federal and provincial governments, education institutions and others for having enabled this degree of fraud and, in many cases, exploitation.

Likely worth looking into ownership of these private colleges to assess whether any degree of political complicity or corruption involved:

The International Student Compliance Regime, implemented in 2014, is designed to help identify bogus students and help provinces identify questionable schools.

Most of the colleges on IRCC’s top ten list of schools with the highest potential non-compliance rates are privately run and in Ontario, catering heavily to students from India.

The IRCC’s Student Integrity Analysis Report, dated November, 2021, found “no shows” to make up as much as 90 per cent of students at some private colleges. “No shows” are students with letters of acceptance, who should be enrolled but either did not confirm the acceptance, never attended class or suddenly stopped attending.

The Academy of Learning College in Toronto had a 95 per cent “overall potential student non compliance rate” among students, the report said. Ninety per cent of students were recorded as “no shows.”

The 2021 Student Integrity Analysis Report, obtained by immigration lawyer Richard Kurland through an access to information request, found that Flair College of Management and Technology in Vaughan, Ont., had a “no show” of 75 per cent of students.

Both colleges did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Kurland said the IRCC has known for years which colleges have large numbers of international students not attending classes but have so far failed to act on study permits.

He said the data suggest that some schools may have a business model based on bringing students into Canada and getting their tuition, even if the student doesn’t attend.

“The integrity of our International Students Program is of the utmost importance,” she said in an e-mail.

Source: Immigration Minister urged to crack down on international student ‘no shows’ at colleges

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Invasive or not enough? Lawyers raise concerns over screening of Gaza visa applicants

2024/01/17 Leave a comment

Understandable that the government is being extremely cautious, both for domestic reasons and possibly coordination reasons with Egypt and Israel given their role in authorizing travel out of Gaza, but likely first time social media posts have been part of the formal vetting process (let me know if any other cases):
The security screening the federal government has brought in for people applying to flee the Gaza Strip is facing criticism from both lawyers who feel its questions are too invasive and others who think it should dig even deeper.
A special program that would allow up to 1,000 people in Gaza with relatives in Canada to apply for visas opened for applications last week, with the federal government seeking an extraordinary level of detail.
People are being asked to supply their social media accounts, details about scars and other marks on their bodies, information on everyone they are related to — including through marriage — and every passport they have ever hadThe questions are creating anxiety for families who worry their loved ones might have trouble answering after three months largely without internet access, electricity, or even adequate food or drinking water, said Calgary immigration lawyer Yameena Ansari. She lobbied for the program as a member of the Gaza Family Reunification Project.

“It’s almost impossible to get these answers when you’re talking about people that are running away from their homes,” she said in an interview.The questions are also extremely painful because they suggest that families desperate to flee the violence in Gaza are suspected terrorists, she said.

“This is not a list that we would ask somebody who was coming to Canada on a humanitarian basis,” Ansari said.

“To me, these are the questions I would ask somebody if I thought that they were terrorists or a combatant.”

Meanwhile, Lawyers for Secure Immigration, a group that formed at the outset of the latest Israel-Hamas war, urged the government in a letter last week to ask more pointed questions related to Hamas and terrorist activities to ensure none of the armed militant group’s supporters are allowed into Canada.

Richard Kurland, a Vancouver-based immigration lawyer and member of the newly formed group, called the background questions “grossly insufficient” because they don’t probe for possible connections with Hamas and the events of Oct. 7.Kurland said he understands it’s important for Palestinian Canadians to get their family to Canada safely, but said it’s not something that can be done “blindly.”

Once a bad actor gets into Canada, it is a very long and difficult process to remove them, he said.

This past weekend marked the 100th day of the war, which broke out on Oct. 7 when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 others as hostages.

The military response from Israel was almost immediate as it lay siege to the territory, restricting access to clean water, food, internet and electricity, and subjecting the strip to a near-constant barrage of bombs in its pursuit of Hamas.

The humanitarian catastrophe has displaced most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people. The Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory says 23,000 Palestinians have been killed, though it does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said Palestinians are not considered a greater threat to Canada’s security than people from elsewhere in the world, but the “enhanced biographic information” is part of a standard practice in cases where IRCC is not able to do initial screening on the ground.

The background questions are similar to the ones asked of Afghans who were still in Afghanistan when they applied to come to Canada after the fall of Kabul in 2021, the department said.

“As we did with Afghanistan, we will collect enhanced biographic information and conduct security screening while the applicant is still in Gaza. Provided no inadmissibility concerns are flagged, people who are able to leave Gaza will have their biometrics collected in a third country,” the Immigration Department said in a statement.

Shortly after the Gaza family reunification program was first announced, Liberal Mental Health Minister Ya’ara Saks said members of the Israeli community in Canada had expressed concerns about the program.The conflict in Gaza has coincided with a massive rise in antisemitism across Canada, and police have reported an increase in hate crimes directed at the Jewish community.

“This is a limited program, the security concerns are well understood and the security requirements are strict and follow reviews from Israeli authorities,” Saks assured her constituents in an Instagram post on Dec. 22, the day after the immigration program was first announced.“I understand the concerns I’ve heard from community members. Security is always the number one priority and we will be vigilant.”

Saks declined to elaborate on her comments when contacted by The Canadian Press last week.

The background questions are only the first of a multi-step screening process.

If no concerns are flagged, basic personal details like name, date of birth, sex, and passport information of the applicant will be passed on to Israeli and Egyptian governments, which will do their own vetting and determine whether or not the individual can leave Gaza. After that, applicants will still have to undergo fingerprinting and other biometrics before they can board a plane to Canada.

The Immigration Department has promised to be flexible if applicants don’t have access to all the background information that has been asked of them, but Jewish Toronto immigration lawyer Debbie Rachlis said that flexibility is not enshrined in the policy.“That’s not written down anywhere and to me it’s not worth anything,” said Rachlis, who is also a member of the Gaza Family Reunification Project.

The penalties for putting incomplete or inaccurate information in the application can be significant, she said, including getting banned from Canada for up to five years.

Rachlis said she wouldn’t be able to answer some of the questions about herself, especially without written records. She said there is no real recourse for people who get refused because they can’t remember details, like all of their past work supervisors’ names.

The government is still accepting applications, and hasn’t given any estimate of when visas could be issued. The department said the application process could take longer than it otherwise would if IRCC has to wait for additional information to complete background checks.

Source: Invasive or not enough? Lawyers raise concerns over screening of Gaza visa applicants

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Douglas Todd: Foreign-student dreams being crushed in greedy Canada

2023/10/13 Leave a comment

More on exploitative education industry practices for international students, with complicity among governments, education institutions (particularly private), consultants and others.

Not convinced, however, that “taxpayers would be willing to spend more on higher education to support domestic students and protect foreign students from being taken advantage of:”

The record number of international students in Canada is an “asset that is very lucrative,” according to Immigration Minister Marc Miller.

And he’s not kidding. With Canada’s official foreign student numbers at 800,000, and CIBC bank economist Benjamin Tal informing the Liberal cabinet the actual figure is more like 1.3 million, it’s often boasted people on study visas bring about $30 billion a year into the country.

Much of that lucre in Canada, put together by wealthy and middle-income families around the world, goes toward more than 1,600 Canadian public and private learning institutions. The rest is funnelled into the wider economy, including the pockets of big-city landlords.

But a prominent Vancouver businessman and educational philanthropist, Barj Dhahan, who works in higher education in both India and Canada, uses the word greedy to describe the organizations and individuals raking in windfall profits from international students.

The co-founder of the Canada India Education Society, which collaborates with the University of B.C. and Punjabi organizations to educate thousands of students and nurses in India, said he hears stories each week from families of foreign students about how Canada is exploiting and even abusing them.

“They come here because they’ve been sold a dream. And their dreams are dashed,” Dhahan said.

Many international student are upset, or even in despair, when they discover Canadian rents are extreme, their schooling is often shoddy, especially in small private schools, tuition fees are four to eight times that of domestic students, decent jobs are hard to get and their chances of becoming Canadian citizens are low.

Last week, it was learned through access to information that, in 2021, Ottawa’s Immigration Department conducted a survey of 3,700 international students, which found an overwhelming 87 per cent plan to apply for permanent residence in Canada. That’s a spike from 70 per cent in 2020.

Vancouver immigration lawyer and researcher Richard Kurland, who obtained the internal government survey, said there is no way that many aspiring foreign students will be able to obtain coveted citizenship, since there is intense competition for spots.

Given that many families around the planet have literally “bet the farm” to finance their children’s education abroad in hopes they will get immigrant status, Kurland, a frequent adviser to Parliament, believes Canada has a moral obligation to warn of the likelihood of crushed expectations.

The reputation of Canada, and its educational system, is being damaged both here and abroad, says Dhahan, who is also founder of the $45,000 Dhahan Prize for Punjabi Literature and a major contributor to international programs at UBC, Carleton University in Ottawa, and other institutions.

In addition to questioning the cost and quality of education at Canada’s often-tiny private colleges and language schools, most of which rely almost entirely on foreign nationals, Dhahan is appalled tuition fees for foreign students have soared at many of the country’s large public universities.

Dhahan points, for instance, to how UBC now frequently charges a foreign student seven times more than a domestic student. For instance, one year in UBC’s undergrad arts program costs an international student about $45,000, while the rate is $5,800 for a domestic student. The price tag on other programs can be much higher.

Tuition fees for international students are also exorbitant, he said, at most public and private colleges, where students from India are by far the biggest cohort of international students. Chinese students make up the largest group of international students at universities.

Given that many Canadian universities and colleges don’t want to rely so heavily on foreign students to survive, Dhahan believes taxpayers would be willing to spend more on higher education to support domestic students and protect foreign students from being taken advantage of.

Dhahan said it’s disturbing that a lot of foreign students whose parents are not rich are being encouraged by immigration consultants here and abroad to sign up for six-month programs at some of Canada’s more than 900 private schools, mainly so they can gain a work permit.

“Canadian governments have no policing resources to monitor how many actually study, or how many stay in Canada beyond the six-month program,” Dhahan said. “There is no determination as to who leaves and who stays.”

Since the vast majority of foreign students want to eventually become Canadian citizens, Dhahan and Kurland say they are vulnerable to victimization by seedy employers.

Some desperate students, according to Dhahan and recent reports, are paying employers kickbacks worth tens of thousands of dollars to fill out a government form called a labour market impact assessment, which allows them to work longer in Canada so they can apply for permanent resident status.

Listening to troubled families and students over the years, Dhahan has also heard many variations on news media reports about landlords taking advantage of foreign students.

“I would say the reputations of our world-class public colleges and universities are being tarnished right now.” Good quality public institutions are being lumped together with dubious private ones, Dhahan said. And both, he said, are often demanding “rapacious” and “unjust” tuition fees.

In a reference to the West’s past history of colonialism, which often led to the exploitation of the people of developing nations, Dhahan said: “It’s colonization all over again. Just in a different way.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Foreign-student dreams being crushed in greedy Canada

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Amid record immigration, some experts fear newcomers are ‘falling out of love with Canada’

2023/09/28 Leave a comment

Bit rambling and largely ignores the impact of the larger number of temporary residents coming to Canada as today’s StatsCan report shows over 2 million non-permanent residents.

Some interesting insights by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, Business Council of Canada, Anil Verma, Richard Kurland, and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce:

A historic 431,645 new permanent residents were added to Canada’s population in 2022, but decreasing affordability and a sluggish economy have many immigrants reconsidering a future in Canada.

Immigration advocates and business leaders say it will have troubling consequences for the country. 

Just over a year ago, a survey conducted by Leger on behalf of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship suggested that three out of 10immigrants in Canada aged 35 and under are considering leaving the country within the next two years. The reasons cited were the astronomical cost of living and unrecognized credentials. 

“We think that because we’re not an officially xenophobic country, and because we are more open to newcomers than most other developed countries in the world, that this is therefore just paradise and everyone will come and stay,” says ICC CEO Daniel Bernhard. 

The ICC is a national charity that assists newcomers with the immigration process and integrating into Canadian society. Bernhard says the ICC’s research team could find no official studies about Canada’s immigrant retention rate and are now in the process of conducting one themselves. 

“We do know…that the number of permanent residents who are becoming citizens has nosedived, so these are indications that newcomers are falling out of love with Canada,” says Bernhard. 

In February, the ICC reported that the 2021 census found just 45.7 percent of permanent residents had gone on to become citizens in that previous 10-year period, a sharp decline from 75 percent in 2001.

Canada fell from 9th place in 2016 to 15th in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index and scored poorly on immigration retention. 

“Two-thirds of our members directly recruit newcomers through the immigration system and then the rest of them hire newcomers once they’re already relocated in Canada,” says Trevor Neiman, the director of policy and legal counsel at the Business Council of Canada. 

Neiman, and others in the business community, say this poses a major problem for the country’s economy. 

“Having a sufficient supply of labour underpins our entire economic model,” says Daniel Safayeni, the vice president of policy at the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. “So for businesses, to be able to find and retain the talent that they need is critical, and immigration is part of that equation.”

However, others are skeptical of the alarm bells being rung over these potential departures. 

“We have processed more cases than ever, at a fraction of the cost,” says Richard Kurland, a lawyer and policy analyst at Kurland-Tobe, a law firm specializing in immigration. “We have undergone an upgrade. It is a work in process, not perfect by any means, but what can you say when you get more people we need in huge numbers at the lowest per case cost ever?” 

Canada’s brand is threatened

While noting Canada has a very strong immigration brand that has helped it retain the best and brightest over the years, Neiman says that brand is under threat due to Canada falling behind on immigration backlogs, affordable housing, and credentialing. 

Neiman points out that in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index, Canada fell from 9th place in 2016 to 15th, and scored poorly on immigration retention. 

Bernhard says Canada needs a sufficient working-age population to support the social services promised by the government but that many of the countries that Canada traditionally relies upon for a supply of immigrants are outperforming it in key areas. 

“We do need a fresh infusion of working-age people…there are a lot of other countries that have figured out how to deliver health care at a high quality for less money, they figured out how to build transit at a decent quality for less money, they figured out how to build housing at a decent quality for less money,” says Bernhard. 

Neiman says countries like India and China have worked to curb skilled emigration, resulting in many of their citizens choosing to return home after a period of working or being educated in Canada. 

In 2022, the Times of India reported that many Indian nationals working abroad were returning home due to pandemic-born uncertainties and competitive job offers. Furthermore, Neiman says countries like Australia, who have historically been less open to immigration, have changed their policies to make them more attractive. 

Last August, the Australian government raised its permanent annual immigration quota to 195,000, up from 160,000 in the previous year. Worth noting is that the GCTI ranked Australia in 9th place in 2022, Canada’s former position. 

“Businesses and governments need to be laser-focused on ensuring that Canada is the top choice for newcomers who have so many options, and who are so sophisticated, and can choose wherever in the world they want to be,” says Neiman.

Credentials aren’t recognized 

Bernhard notes that highly regulated professions such as engineering, nursing, law, and medicine have strong entry barriers in Canada. 

“Immigrants to Canada in the economic class tend to be about twice as likely as the average Canadian to hold a university degree,” says Bernhard. “They’re far better educated and tend to actually be considerably younger, so they have more working years ahead of them.” 

Credentials in fields like dentistry and medicine from countries like India and Iran, both sources of large numbers of immigrants, are often not recognized by those industries’ professional colleges in Canada. 

“A lot of people don’t find appropriate employment right away,” says Bernhard. “And eventually that gap shrinks, but the impact on earnings and things like that lasts forever.” 

In the past, these barriers have resulted in legal battles to ensure foreign accreditation is properly recognized, such as in B.C. to ensure that Indian-trained veterinarians could be allowed to practice without undue scrutiny. 

Calls to soften the barriers for people trained abroad in the medical profession have grown in recent years as Canada’s health-care system is increasingly strained by a lack of new doctors and nurses. Bernhard says other barriers exist for other professions as well. 

“What a lot of people do not realize is that there are other softer barriers for people like marketing professionals, HR people, all these non-regulated jobs, where peoples’ experiences are also not being fairly recognized in the workplace,” says Bernhard. “It’s a big problem for Canada, which reports shortages in these areas despite the presence of many people who are qualified and working below their capability.”

Not a new issue

Anil Verma, the professor emeritus of industrial relations and HR management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, does not believe the trend of immigrants cooling to Canada is new at all. 

“Just to give you my personal perspective on this, I emigrated to Canada in 1974, and so now over the last 50 years, I’ve seen the ebb and flow of immigrants coming and going,” says Verma. “It accelerates in the years that the Canadian economy is not doing well. It is much less of a problem during growth years, so there is an economic cycle to this.” 

Safayeni says Ontario’s economy is expected to slow down eventually as a result of higher interest rates, so it’s understandable that businesses are feeling more pessimistic.

“But when you look at the top two concerns underpinning that concern, it’s labour shortages and inflation,” says Safayeni.

Verma believes modern immigration to Canada must be addressed as a long-term issue, and that the country is being affected by a globalizing economy. 

“I think that what has happened, and that is relatively newer, is that there is a global market now in high-tech talent,” says Verma. “If you are a cutting-edge medical researcher, or similarly positioned in your profession or occupation, there are people all over the world hunting for you, or enticing you to move.” 

“Our members are disproportionately using immigration programs to attract highly skilled and highly specialized talent,” says Neiman. “So things like cyber security professionals, engineers, mathematicians.” 

Neiman says the labour shortage situation has changed drastically in the past few years regarding the need to fill gaps in the labour market. 

Record numbers of Canadian workers retired during the pandemic, and from August 2021 to August 2022, yearly retirements rose by over 30 percent. 

Neiman says that while they use the immigration system to address labour shortages, there is a wider interest in highly skilled immigrants with specialized areas of expertise.

“The particular skill set that’s in demand, that kind of a higher skill type of more specialized talent, has also grown as well,” says Neiman. “So I think there’s big structural forces here that are at play.”

Affordability matters

Internal migration may provide an example of how an issue like unaffordability is driving young, educated workers out of Toronto, Canada’s economic centre for the last 50 years, to more affordable cities like Calgary. One of the main reasons cited for Toronto’s unaffordability is the lack of housing supply in the Greater Toronto Area. 

Affordability has traditionally not been an area covered by the Chamber, but Safayeni says it has struck a task force to study the issue. In April, Alberta residents paid $873 less in monthly rent for an apartment, and $387,780 less when buying a house in March. 

Verma says affordability remains a huge problem, and that young people are drawn to urban centres like Vancouver and Toronto, but it becomes a problem when their salaries cannot cover the costs of living. 

Bernhard says the affordability crisis affects everybody, immigrant or non-immigrant. 

“Immigrants are a special class of people, but they also live in society with everybody else, and they’re subjected to the same pressures as everybody else,” says Bernhard. 

Verma, however, says people whose families have settled in Canada would be reluctant to uproot themselves and move away. He says the survey showing three out of 10 permanent residents are considering leaving Canada displays only their opinion, not what will actually happen. 

“I don’t see that this is a big problem. The main reason why people come to Canada is because of better economic opportunities,” says Verma. “Canada is a great place to live…wages are relatively high as compared to the world. They are not as high as in the U.S. but that has been true for the last 50 years.” 

Richard Kurland, the lawyer at Kurland-Tobe, however, says anybody who leaves Canada will be replaced by others.

“You have a bus where 25 percent of the passengers want out, and four times that number of people who want in,” says Kurland. “Anyone who wants to leave, God bless. There are a ton of replacements, with higher human capital scores, due to the nature of Canada’s new selection system.” 

Bernhard says Canada can learn from new immigrants to its benefit. 

“It isn’t just about standing still and replacing old people and hoping for the best. It’s about an optimistic vision for the future,” he said.

“Canada has always been built on that vision for hundreds of years, this is how we succeeded and I think that we need to keep that tradition alive.” 

Geoff Russ is a full-time writer for The Hub. He is based in British Columbia. @GeoffRuss3

Source: Amid record immigration, some experts fear newcomers are ‘falling out of love with Canada’

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