Quebec immigrant program increases in popularity … with ‘downsides’ for B.C. | Vancouver Sun

2016/07/13 Leave a comment

Ongoing coverage and controversy. I agree with the critics:

The Quebec government, running a cash-for-visa program labelled a “fraud” and “scam” by critics who say it hurts British Columbia, received a record-breaking number of rich immigrants in 2015.

The 40-per-cent increase took place a year after the former Conservative federal government complained that the program’s harms outweighed its benefits and shut down an identical national investor-luring scheme.

Quebec has autonomy to select its own immigrants under a 1991 accord with the federal government, so decided to continue its own program.

Critics, including Conservative MP Jason Kenney when he was immigration minister, have complained that the vast majority of investor immigrants are wealthy Asians who dishonestly declare an intention to live in Quebec, then move immediately, to Toronto and, especially, to Vancouver.

Quebec gets the financial benefits of the program while Metro Vancouver gets inflated housing prices and added stress on the public education and health care systems, the critics argue.

The latest evidence of Quebec’s growing enthusiasm for luring millionaire migrants prompted criticism of the B.C. government, which hasn’t been vocal on the issue despite allegations that the program has played a role in Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis.

“The silence from the B.C. government has been absolutely startling,” said New Democratic Party MLA David Eby.

“In effect, they are content with a program that brings major housing affordability problems, while allowing many wealthy migrants to use British Columbia’s social services virtually for free.”

Jobs Minister Shirley Bond said in a statement Friday that Victoria has “consistently” raised its concerns with Ottawa about the need for additional settlement funding to offset the cost of “secondary migration” when immigrants land somewhere else but then head straight to the West Coast.
“We are in active conversations with the federal government,” she said, noting that Quebec has had the authority for decades to select its own immigrants.

The total number of applicants and their family members admitted under the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program reached just over 5,000 last year.

That compares with 2014’s total of 3,669. The previous high was 4,436 in 2012.

Quebec says it will bring in roughly the same number in 2016, according to the province’s immigration plan tabled recently in the Quebec National Assembly.

The former Conservative government, while initially enthusiastic about the program, soon questioned its value and sharply reduced national admissions from an average of around 9,200 in 2008-2010 to 3,787 in its final year of 2014.

When the Tories shut down the program in 2014 they said the program’s costs far outweighed the benefits for Canadian — and especially B.C. — taxpayers.

Quebec’s enthusiasm during this period soared, from a little over 1,000 in 2008 to five times that annual total now.

Kenney, who said applicants misrepresenting themselves in their applications were engaged in “a crime” and “fraud” in 2013,  was unable to get bureaucrats to take action before he was shuffled out of the ministry later that year.

The only positive economic spin-off Eby said that he’s witnessed in his Vancouver-Point Grey riding, the focus of Vancouver’s housing price explosion, is the opening of a Ferrari dealership.

“Apart from that, it’s hard to figure out what benefit we see in British Columbia for this program. And the downsides are profound.”

Simon Fraser University professor Joshua Gordon, author of a recent report on Vancouver’s housing crisis, said every British Columbian who hears about the Quebec program is “appalled,” and yet the Clark government “won’t go to bat” for them.

“The absence of any public pressure from the B.C. government on the feds or Quebec to end the program is revealing about the way the Clark government thinks about the housing issue,” Gordon said Friday.

“What this suggests is that the Clark government’s strategy is to continue to fuel the housing bubble, since they realize it’s the main economic game in town, and hope that equity windfalls for boomers will get them re-elected — and that the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down.”

A spokesman for the Quebec immigration ministry, meanwhile, said Friday that his province didn’t jump in to increase its intake as a result of Ottawa’s departure from the field.

Quebec has actually reduced the number of applications it has accepted in recent years, from 2,138 in 2013 to 1,278 in 2015, according to Jonathan Lavallee. He indicated the recent bump had to do with a processing backlog in the federal system — a contention that Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland supports.

The Quebec government has also acknowledged the leakage problem, saying in a 2014 discussion paper that only a “small minority” choose to settle in Quebec for the long term.

Kurland praised Quebec’s recent efforts to retain more rich immigrants. One such measure gives preferential treatment to French-speakers.

The federal figures don’t break down the source countries for the immigrants through the investor program. However, the Quebec government says 89 per cent of its investor immigrants this year will come from Asia.

The Quebec investor program, for a net cost that Kurland pegs at $125,000, allows wealthy foreigners jump to the front of the immigration queue even if they didn’t speak a word of English or French.

Federal Immigration Minister John McCallum said in a recent interview that he has no intention of challenging Quebec on its immigration policy, and a departmental spokeswoman said the province has every right under a 1991 Canada-Quebec accord to set its immigration policy.

Kurland said Canada has the authority to shut down Quebec’s program if it has the political will to annoy a province in which Trudeau holds 40 of 78 seats.

And he challenged the common assertion that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees mobility rights, prevents authorities from forcing newly arrived permanent residents to stay in Quebec after arrival.

He noted that all charter rights are subjected to Section 1 of the 1982 Constitution Act, which says all rights can be circumscribed by “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

Kurland, who believes B.C. should set up its own investor program, said a court could be convinced that it is “reasonable” to insist that newcomers stay in the province they declared an intent to live in for their first two years in Canada.

That could be enforced by requiring successful applicants to forfeit the entire $800,000 investment if they move before that time.

“The Charter has a two-part test. A breach of rights is not the end of the debate.”

Ian Young, the South China Morning Post’s Vancouver correspondent, echoed Kenney’s harsh assessment in a column last week.

“It is a money-grubbing prank perpetrated upon Vancouver by Quebec,” Young said. “It is a scam, and it needs to stop.”

Source: Quebec immigrant program increases in popularity … with ‘downsides’ for B.C. | Vancouver Sun

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Study says foreign buyers spend more on B.C. homes, but some dispute data

2016/07/12 Leave a comment

More on Vancouver housing and immigration:

Critics argue there are larger holes in the data than the small window of time it encompasses.

Richard Kurland, a Vancouver immigration lawyer who works with wealthy clients from China, said the government should break the statistics out into postal codes so foreign ownership of high-end homes could be better tracked, and ultimately taxed. Four per cent of Vancouver sales were registered to foreigners, but Mr. Kurland said those likely occurred in a select number of tony west side neighbourhoods.

“It would be useful, because this is a problem that should not be attacked by a mallet, but a surgeon’s scalpel,” he said. “The driver is at the high end of the property market.”

Richmond and Burnaby saw the highest levels of foreign ownership in the region, at 11 per cent and 14 per cent respectively, but there is no indication of where that investment occurred, he said.

Mr. Kurland said the government’s metric is not gauging the true level of foreign participation in the local housing market because it is classifying tens of thousands of wealthy “investor immigrants” from China as permanent residents despite earning all of their income abroad and, in some cases, continuing to live abroad while owning properties in B.C.

From 2002 to 2013, about 1,000 millionaire migrants flocked to Vancouver each year under a federal government program that was ultimately shut down after Mr. Kurland raised concerns over its effectiveness at generating local economic growth.

This net migration has made a large impact because when these families bought a home in B.C. another unit of housing was not relinquished into the market.

“With domestic people it’s [often] a push: one bought, one sold,” he said. “With an immigrant investor, it’s one bought, none sold, and that’s what restricts supply.”

Tom Davidoff, a professor at the University of British Columbia and economist leading the charge for a targeted property tax, said the government should not “drag nationality” into the housing debate, but rather focus on whether people owning homes in this frothy market also earn their money in the region.

If not, then those owners should be charged a surtax for enjoying government services paid for through income tax, he said.

“When you’re using something scarce you should pay the true cost,” he said.

Source: Study says foreign buyers spend more on B.C. homes, but some dispute data – The Globe and Mail

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Chinese K-12 students a booming demographic for B.C. schools

2016/05/26 Leave a comment

While from an integration perspective, earlier arrival generally means better results, it is telling how strategic some Chinese parents are, and how market-oriented some private schools are:

The average age of Chinese students arriving in B.C. and Canada is dropping dramatically as growing numbers of international K-12 pupils, not just college students, are enrolling in local schools.

According to a monthly report published by Canadian immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, there is a demographic shift occurring in the kind of student visas being processed by Canada’s embassy in Beijing. Kindergarten-to-Grade 12 students made up 37 per cent of all study permits issued in China last year, a sharp rise from 18 per cent just six years ago. In B.C., there were 1,094 Chinese students enrolled in K-12 in 2009; by 2014, that figure had quadrupled to 4,306.

Kurland says the statistics suggest a shift in the thinking of Chinese families about how to get their children — and perhaps themselves — Canadian residency. He pointed to recent changes in Canadian immigration law that make “Express Entry” a lottery system for international college students, causing Chinese families to seek ways to improve their chances.

“It used to be, if you are from China, and you are in Canada on a college study permit, you had an excellent chance of gaining residency,” Kurland said. “They may have had to wait, but students could say, ‘I know I’m in.’

“The new system threw all of that predictability and transparency out the window. It didn’t make sense to gamble $30,000 to $40,000 a year (on college) if the goal was permanent residence.”

Experts say sending students to Canada at a younger age speeds integration into Canadian society and improves their chances for residency in a number of ways. Kurland speculates that Ottawa may already be looking at changes to give residency preference to students who graduated from Canadian elementary and secondary schools. But there are other reasons why parents are sending their children to B.C. earlier.

Huichen Li, 26, has first-hand experience.

“I have asthma, so my parents thought coming here would be better for my health,” said Li, who is currently president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s campus in Richmond. “We thought we could get adjusted earlier by coming earlier.”

Li arrived in Canada as a Grade 10 student and attended North Vancouver’s Bodwell High School, a private international boarding school. He lived in a dorm for a year before his parents followed him.

Randall Martin, executive director of the B.C. Council for International Education, said China’s previous “One-Child Policy” put a lot of pressure on many families’ only child. If a child has the responsibility of possibly supporting all family members as they age, going abroad early can be very important, he said.

“Basically, a child has six guardians: two parents and four grandparents,” Martin said. “Ultimately, the sense from the families is that — if the state can’t support those six people — that one child has to. … And if you’ve got one child, you want the best for his or her health, and that’s not going to be in a major city in China. With the ability of all these relatives to support a student going abroad, it’s almost a no-brainer.”

The enormous market also means many B.C. schools actively court Chinese K-12 students, which concerns some in the industry.

Paul Romani, founder of Vancouver’s Pear Tree Elementary, said his school accepts very few international students, and charges all students similar fees. But many other institutions charge significantly higher fees for international students, giving administrators an incentive to go after more Chinese students, he noted.

“There are some private schools in B.C. that are increasingly exploiting the higher fees charged for international students, as well as the unbelievably generous ‘donations’ … which few B.C. families could ever compete with,” Romani said.

Source: Chinese K-12 students a booming demographic for B.C. schools | Vancouver Sun

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Douglas Todd: Mixed motives fuel rise of foreign students

2016/05/24 Leave a comment

Not surprising that universities and other educational institutions view foreign students from an economic perspective and that foreign families consider not only the education but financial (shift money to Canada, invest in real estate) and political benefits (citizenship).

But, as in the case over the debate over housing prices, it raises policy issues:

Immigration Canada data shows about 72,000 foreign students from Mainland Chinese were accepted in 2014, 36,000 from India, 17,000 from South Korea and 13,000 from France. In total, one out of four foreign students in Canada is from China.
Canadian politicians talk in predictable ways about the increasing number of foreign students.

Wilkinson maintains Chinese and other foreign students bring “social, cultural and economic benefits.” And they pay full fees for their own educations, unlike subsidized homegrown students.

The federal Immigration Minister John McCallum often calls foreign students “the cream of the crop.”

But noted specialists in higher education, including Boston College’s Philip Altbach and Ontario’s Jane Knight, say the quality of foreign students is going down as their numbers inflate.

Most foreign students are now second tier, say Altbach and Knight. They’re generally not doing well in the schools in their countries of origin. But many have rich parents.

Given the trend, Knight argues that most Western foreign-student programs have lost their humanitarian origins and become elaborate cash grabs. They make it possible for governments like British Columbia’s to mask that they are tightening education funding.

What are some foreign students in Canada doing when they’re not studying?

Canada’s federal housing agency, looking for new methods to track foreign ownership in the country’s soaring real estate markets, has considering classifying foreign university students as foreign buyers as it steps up its investigation into global money-laundering.

Bloomberg News discovered that Canada Mortgage & Housing Corp., the Crown corporation that tracks housing data, is especially interested in how the red-hot housing markets in Toronto and Vancouver are partly fuelled by foreign students, some of whom live in multi-million-dollar homes near the UBC campus.

In a related study, urban planner Andy Yan, head of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, discovered that in a six-month period in 2015, about 70 per cent of 172 detached homes sold on Vancouver’s west side were purchased by Mainland Chinese buyers.

Yan’s research showed that, of all self-declared occupations among owners of the high-priced homes in the study, 36 per cent were housewives or students with little income.

Five of eight homes owned by “students” were bought outright with cash at an average value of $3.2 million.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, a frequent adviser to the federal parliament, said it’s clear that most children from around the world who are able to afford to live and pay full education fees in expensive cities like Toronto and Vancouver are from “elite families.”

One bonus of getting children into Canada as foreign students, Kurland says, is that those who are able can become players in real-estate investment. Students are being declared as property owners of Vancouver residential property because they aid in international money transfers, Kurland said.

Foreign students have the advantage of being able to appear as residents of Canada for income tax purposes, even as their declared earned income would be extremely low.

As principal resident of a dwelling, Kurland said, a foreign student does not have to pay capital gains when his or her home is sold at a profit. “Then, out of the goodness of their heart, they can send the profit back to their uncle in China,” Kurland said with irony.

In addition to aiding the movement of trans-national wealth, however, possibly the more common reason a well-off foreign family puts a great deal of effort into establishing their son or daughter in Canada is that it goes a long way to obtaining a second passport.
Canadian politicians often rank international students as prime candidates for immigration. Roughly three out of 10 foreign students have gone on to become Canadian citizens. And that proportion is expected to rise.

Kurland believes more foreign students from China are being flown to Canada at “younger and younger ages … in part because they’re a no-fit in the Chinese educational system.” They need to establish themselves early in Canada’s educational system if they’re going to make it.

The immigration lawyer, who publishes a newsletter called Lexbase, discovered that Mainland Chinese families have doubled the rate at which they’re sending their children to Canadian elementary and high schools. Four out of 10 foreign students in Canada, including those from Mainland China, now apply for “secondary school or less.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Mixed motives fuel rise of foreign students | Vancouver Sun

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Millionaire immigrant investor program lures only 7 instead of 60

2016/01/23 Leave a comment

No surprise. Immigrant investor programs always have a ‘cash for citizenship’ aspect to them, with investors making rate-of-return calculations. And while the previous government may have talked up the ‘value’ of citizenship, clearly investors found the cost far greater than the benefits.

Lesson from the pilot – cancel the program:

The Immigrant Investor Venture Capital program, a revamped version of a program critics once denounced as “cash for citizenship,” was launched under the former Conservative government.

It was meant to attract rich immigrants willing to make a non-guaranteed investment of $2 million up front, which would be held for 15 years in a fund managed principally by BDC Capital, the investment arm of the Business Development Bank of Canada, in return for permanent residency. They also had to prove they had even more money in the bank.

But a year after it was launched, the pilot program has yielded just seven applications from potential international investors and no permanent resident visas.

“The demand for this pilot program has been low,” said Nancy Caron a spokeswoman with the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in an email to CBC News this week.

High-hopes dashed

The previous Conservative government thought it would result in hundreds of applications from rich immigrant investors.

“The program will be open for applications from Jan. 28 to Feb. 11, 2015, or until a maximum of 500 applications are received,” the previous government announced around this time last year.

A year later, Canada is still waiting to welcome it’s first new millionaire immigrant investor.

“A total of seven applications are in process,” said the departmental spokeswoman this week, adding that as of Dec. 30, 2015, four applications had passed a first-stage review and three had passed a second-stage review and were “in process.”

Only when an application reaches the second-stage is it then given a “pass or fail,” Caron explained.

With all seven applications still in process, “No permanent resident visas have yet been issued under this program,” she said.

‘A blank cheque’

The previous Conservative government tightened up the rules under the new pilot after acknowledging that immigrant investors under the old program were not likely to stay in Canada over the long term and contributed “relatively little” to the Canadian economy.

While the Conservatives were hoping to have better luck with this program than they did under the former Immigrant Investor Program, Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer and policy analyst based in Vancouver, said the pilot was “broken” from the get-go.

“Canada was asking prospective immigrants to write a blank cheque and hope that 15 years down the road they would see any return on that investment,” Kurland said in a phone interview with CBC News.

“It’s no surprise to see that the wealthy immigrant investor crowd would look at other immigration possibilities to come to this country in order to grow our economy, create jobs and find a secure place for their own families.”

Source: Millionaire immigrant investor program lures only 7 instead of 60 – Politics – CBC News

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Millionaire migration to Canada didn’t fall after investor scheme’s axing – it rose, new data reveals | South China Morning Post

2015/08/05 3 Comments

Millionaire_migration_to_Canada_didn_t_fall_after_investor_scheme_s_axing_-_it_rose__new_data_reveals___South_China_Morning_PostMore on the Investor Immigrant Program and how Quebec continues to encourage investor immigration through its own program:

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) spreadsheets demonstrate that, yes, immigrant investor visa approvals under the federal IIP plunged 42 per cent as the scheme  wound down, falling to a mere 2,541 applicants and family members in 2014.

Yet, astonishingly, overall investor immigrant approvals nationwide were up by 7.2 per cent, hitting 8,762 approvals, the most since 2011.

How? Because, even while Ottawa was hitting the brakes on millionaire migration, the province of Quebec (which runs its own IIP) was hitting the accelerator. And l’accélérateur was winning.

In 2014, Quebec approved a bumper 6,221 millionaire migrants and family members, a whopping 62 per cent increase compared to 2013. It was a near-record year, surpassed only by the 6,292 approvals in 2011.

Quebec’s programme matters to Vancouver, because 89 per cent of Quebec investor immigrants do not end up living there, according to federal data. Most likely end up in Vancouver, assuming those 89 per cent disperse in a fashion similar to their counterparts in the federal scheme.

At this point thanks should go to Richard Kurland, the Vancouver immigration lawyer who has been a relentless pursuer of data that CIC does not prefer to release as a matter of course. The CIC spreadsheets that he shared with me this week were only obtained under access to information requests.

The spreadsheets demonstrate in clear fashion how Quebec has historically approved a majority  of Canada’s millionaire migrants, and has likely approved a majority of those who end up in Vancouver. From 2002 to 2014, Quebec approved 65,151 investor migrants, compared to 45,294 okayed under the federal IIP.

Millionaire migration to Canada didn’t fall after investor scheme’s axing – it rose, new data reveals | South China Morning Post.

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Foreign caregivers face lengthy wait for permanent status

2015/07/23 Leave a comment

More challenges for CIC:

It’s taking twice as long for foreign caregivers to get permanent resident status in Canada as it did a year ago despite Ottawa’s promise to expedite the process.

According to an immigration department internal memo titled “advice to minister,” the processing time for caregivers’ permanent residency reached a record 50 months in January, up from 26 months a year ago. That’s on top of having to work two years alone in Canada — separated from family — in order to meet the residency requirement.

Immigration officials are still wrestling with a huge backlog. As of February, more than 17,600 caregivers who had met the work requirement — down from a peak of 24,600 last year — were still waiting in the queue to be reunited with their spouses and children living abroad.

Delays in granting permanent status and reuniting families often lead to family breakups and cause other adjustment problems for caregivers’ children, including high school dropout rates, said immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who obtained the government memo.

“Caregivers waiting for PR (permanent residency) are unfortunately subject to longer processing,” said Kurland. “In the long term, it’s going to have expensive consequences.”

Ottawa introduced two new caregivers programs in November to replace the decades-old live-in caregivers program. The two programs — designed to bring in caregivers for children and people with high medical needs — remove the live-in conditions but are limited to a combined 5,500 applications a year.

“We have improved the program to make it faster, safer and provide better career opportunities for caregivers across Canada,” Kevin Menard, spokesperson for Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, told the Star.

“We have taken aggressive action to reduce backlogs by planning 30,000 caregiver admissions this year alone, an all-time record, and we will completely eliminate it by the end of 2016.”

Foreign caregivers face lengthy wait for permanent status | Toronto Star.

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Live-in caregivers may be next target of immigration reform

2014/06/25 Leave a comment

Further to the Douglas Todd overview (Live-in Caregiver Program faces nine questions), a sense that something is brewing. Expect the politics will be such that this will be post-election (in addition to the Filipino community, families that employ live-in caregivers are another constituency that would be affected):

Internal documents show the Canadian embassy in Manila has been alerting colleagues since at least 2007 that fraud was an “ongoing problem” in the program and the absence of mothers was proving disruptive to families left behind in the Philippines, “causing infidelity, etc.” Similar warnings were repeated in a 2011 report by Citizenship and Immigration, which noted that large percentages of nannies are brought in to work for relatives.

Live-in caregivers come to Canada through the temporary foreign worker program, but when Ottawa announced major changes last week, the caregiver component – as well as the rules for agricultural workers – was largely unchanged.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who has obtained extensive internal reports on the program via Access to Information, predicts Ottawa will announce this fall that it is phasing out the program.

“It’ll be sensitive because of October, 2015,” said Mr. Kurland, in reference to the impact it will have on Canada’s Filipino community ahead of next year’s federal election.“It is going to be politically controversial within that particular community,” he said, noting that Canada’s Filipino community tends to live in hotly contested swing ridings. Hong Kong and Manila are the top two Canadian missions in terms of approving live-in caregivers. Mr. Kurland notes that internal documents show many of the workers approved in Hong Kong are originally from the Philippines.

Live-in caregivers may be next target of immigration reform – The Globe and Mail.

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C-24 Citizenship Act: Senate Hearings Start

2014/06/11 Leave a comment

While overshadowed by the Galati case and related media coverage, Senate hearings on Bill C-24 treaded much of the familiar ground and focussing on mainly the same issues. Given Parlvu was somewhat choppy yesterday, may not have captured all the main points.

Starting with the witnesses supporting the Bill. Richard Kurland, Lawyer and Policy Analyst, and regular media commentator, applauded the government for providing greater clarity and transparency on the requirements and pathway to citizenship from temporary and permanent residency. The greatest benefit will be in more applications processed in a more timely manner at lower cost. He expressed concern, however, over the insecurity created by the intent to reside provision. He emphasized the need for oral hearings, not allowing citizenship officers to rule on revocation for fraud without the person being able to present themselves. As to citizens of convenience, he argued in favour of the US approach of requiring US citizens living abroad to file tax returns.

 Julie Taub, Immigration and Refugee Lawyer, former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, was even stronger in her support for the Bill. She had “fought the system for decades” and welcomed the tougher penalties for fraud, the simplification of revocation and the crackdown on citizens of convenience, drawing examples from her legal practice and recalling the evacuation of Lebanese Canadians and their eventual return in 2006. She would have preferred residency of five years as Canada was too short compared to other countries. To further avoid residence fraud, she recommended that Permanent Residents be provided with a “swipe card” required for entry to or exit from Canada, given many Permanent Residents have more two passports.
Opposing the Bill were Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, Lorne Waldman, President, and Peter Edelmann, lawyer. They focused on the revocation provisions, noting the differential treatment between various classes of citizens: single national born Canadian; dual national born Canadian and aware of their dual nationality; dual national born Canadian and not aware of their dual nationality; and naturalized Canadians.

Revocation could apply, save in cases of statelessness, to any of the three last categories. The Bill did not say who was a dual national and how dual nationality would be interpreted. Given how citizenship laws vary by countries, some communities would be affected more than others. The reverse onus of proof was not justified. The threshold of 5 years for terrorist offences was too low compared to sentences for murder and sexual assault. Revocation for fraud allowed for no hearing and was a completely paper process without any independent review. The intent to reside provision was not clear on how it would be interpreted and applied, and was another example of differential treatment.

Loly Rico, President and Janet Dench, Executive Director, Canadian Council for Refugees, opposed the increase in residency requirements and removal of credit for pre-PR time, given that refugoees typically spent three to four years of temporary residency before becoming permanent residents. Total time for citizenship could approach eight to ten years with these changes. Extending language and knowledge test requirements made no sense for youth given they would be in Canadian schools; for 55-64 year olds who were refugees, their life circumstances, time in refugee camps etc, may make formal test requirements an unreasonable requirement. CCR opposed revocation as it was discriminatory between Canadian and dual nationals and that punishment was better handled through the criminal system.

Debbie Douglas, Executive Director, of Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, noted the anniversaries of the Komagata Maru and the M.S. St. Louis as a caution against promoting “any sort of racist policies.” OCASI opposed increased residency requirements, removal of credit for pre-Permanent Residents time, particularly for live-in caregivers where family separation has social and family costs. The intent to reside did not recognize that circumstances can change for work, study, or care of family members. Good faith of Minister that this would not apply post citizenship did not change ambiguity of law. Douglas echoed CCR on extending language and knowledge testing to 55-64 year olds, questioning the purpose of adding this additional barrier.
Debate as in the Commons Committee revolved around the familiar issues of intent to reside, revocation, language and knowledge testing, and decision-making process and lack of hearing or appeal. Government senators largely focussed on their defence of the Bill, and Opposition senators largely drew out their positions from witnesses opposed to C-24.
Some of the more interesting points:
  • Government Senators were sceptical that many new citizens would be affected by the intent to reside provision, examples cited by witnesses were “exceptions,”  with Sen. Enverga stating that if you “apply to come to Canada, your should live in Canada.”
  • On revocation for terror or treason, Edelmann trotted out the cliché, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” and how definitions change over time. But more originally, rather than the usual Mandela example, he cited the contemporary example of Greenpeace being charged in Russia (Dench referred to Maher Arar). He also noted other heinous crimes, mentioning Paul Bernardo and Robert Picton, questioning why terrorism or treason should be treated differently;
  • There was a fairly spirited exchange on whether restoring knowledge and language testing to 55-64 year olds was an unreasonable barrier. Taub and Senator Eaton noted that basic language capability was not unreasonable to require. Refugee advocates emphasized for some it was, given what they had gone through. Senator Eaton, as a 70-year old, found their concerns to be “patronizing” to seniors but acknowledged that it may be a “huge struggle” for some. After probing by the Chair whether this was regarding language capability itself or formal testing, Douglas confirmed that it was more the lack of the alternative of an interview with a citizenship judge
  • Israel’s “law of return” was cited by Kurland as an example of dual citizenship. Some citizens, particularly refugees,  will always have a “fear of the state.” We will see how the judiciary “handles it,” acknowledging that this created two classes of citizenship.
  • Senator Eaton and Taub noted recent media reports of young men fighting in foreign conflicts and the risks of returning fighters to Canada. Taub noted there “really is not a choice” between Charter provisions and keeping Canada safe, and 75 percent of Canadians support revocation in these cases.
  • Whether more or less time in Canada increases integration was subject of debate. Douglas was powerful in noting that inclusion and removal of barriers  “goes a longer way than time,” citing the example of Black Canadians who had been here for generations.
  • Indicating the philosophical divide was a short exchange on citizenship as a privilege (Senator Enverga) and as a right (particularly Rico), who emphasized that as a former refugee from El Salvador, the right to be a full citizen, with all the rights and responsibilities that entailed as anyone born in Canada. That was part of the “beauty of Canada,” its inclusiveness and multiculturalism.
Hearings continue today with Martin Collacott, CBA, Asia-Pacific Foundation, Canadian War Brides (shut out from Commons Committee hearings), and PAFSO (foreign service union). Will be interesting to see if Galati case comes up during questions of the CBA witnesses.

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Live-in Caregiver Program faces nine questions | Vancouver Sun

2014/05/28 1 Comment

Interesting piece by Douglas Todd on the live-in caregivers program. I was not aware of the high percentage of live-in caregivers working for members of their own families. Most of the experts cited are critical of the program rather than a more balanced selection, but this does not necessarily invalidate their concerns:

The nine debates:

1. How much does Canada need foreign caregivers who work for their own families?

Since 40 to 70 per cent of Filipino caregivers live with their own sponsoring families in Canada, Kurland says it makes it hard to tell whether a family “is pulling a fast one” and the foreign domestic worker is properly trained or “performing their duties.” …

2. Is the LCP a back-door family reunification program?

Statistics Canada data shows in any given year Canada grants permanent residency to almost as many dependents of live-in caregivers as to the domestic workers themselves. The backlog for live-in caregivers and dependents seeking permanent residency is three years and contains more than 25,000 people, mostly Filipinos. Still, in 2011 Canada gave permanent residency to more than 11,000 caregivers and their children or spouses; in 2012 the figure was 9,000.

3. Poor school and workplace performances

Numerous studies show the offspring of Filipino immigrants, especially boys, do not perform well in schools across Canada. UBC professor May Farrales has focused on the achievement gap among Filipino students in Vancouver, where they drop out of school more and have lower averages….

4. Filipino-Canadians rely more on taxpayers support

Filipinos earn less than Canadians in general, according to a York University study, which says the LCP’s “two-step” approach to immigration has “led to poor economic outcomes for those entering through the program, as well as long periods of separation from family.” Those who come to Canada in conjunction with the LCP, says the study, end up on average receiving more taxpayer support than other Canadians.

While some believe the family separation dilemma could be eased by giving live-in caregivers and their dependents permanent residency upon arrival in Canada, Kurland says that’s not feasible. It would remove live-in helpers incentive to complete even their two-year stint.

5. Does the LCP subsidize affluent families?

The media have run stories about well-off Canadian couples engaging in “nanny poaching” because of reportedly strong competition for live-in caregivers. But, if many caregivers work for their own families and virtually all leave such live-in duties as soon as they can, how intense can demand be?

Caregivers “from less developed countries are prepared to work long hours for low wages in order to obtain permanent residency,” says Martin Collacott, a former ambassador to Asia who is spokesman for the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform. “In effect, the relatively small number of affluent Canadians who can afford to bring in live-in caregivers from overseas are being underwritten by taxpayers.”

6. Other countries more attractive to domestic workers, except for one thing

Most Filipino live-in caregivers would avoid Canada and choose to work in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia or Japan or if it weren’t for the offer of citizenship, say Serafico and Diesta….

7. Are live-in caregivers circumventing immigration screening?

Most immigrants to Canada are admitted based on job skills or potential to invest. But live-in caregivers are babysitters, nannies and seniors helpers, which Immigration Canada ranks as low-skill. They are not eligible to get into Canada through regular immigration categories.

“Is the LCP really meeting an ongoing labour-market need or simply functioning as a means of immigration to Canada by individuals who wouldn’t otherwise qualify?” asks Collacott, who frequently appears before immigration subcommittees in Ottawa….

8. How does the LCP affect the Philippines?

Filipinos who work abroad send home more than $23 billion a year in remittances. “It’s keeping the whole country afloat, even with all its corruption,” says UBC’s Laquian, who arrived in Vancouver in the 1960s when there were fewer than 1,000 Filipinos in Canada.

While Laquian and his wife, Eleanor, actively support the Vancouver Committee for Domestic Workers and Caregivers Rights, he worries about the downside of so many industrious people leaving behind their families and the Philippines….

9. Would an au pair program be more effective?

With so many questions about Canada’s offer of citizenship to foreign live-in-caregivers, Kurland thinks highly of instituting an alternative “au pair program.”

An au pair program would offer temporary work to foreign nationals, but lead to better, more regulated working conditions that would lure caregivers from a wider range of countries, including, he says, France, Spain and Ireland….

Live-in Caregiver Program faces nine questions | Vancouver Sun.

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