Privatizing immigration

 

 

It all began with the rapid rise in the number of temporary foreign workers who have been coming to Canada to fill in labour shortages that cannot be addressed by Canadian workers. There is no quota for this type of workers, no upper limits.

 

There are more temporary foreign workers in Canada over the past decade, more so and rapidly since 2006. Today their ranks outnumber those of economic immigrants.

 

In 2010 alone, there were 283,096 temporary foreign workers in Canada, doing work that employers claimed there was no Canadian available to do. This is the highest on record, but only slightly higher than the number recorded during the worst of the recession in 2009.

 

The highest demand for temporary foreign workers comes from Alberta and Saskatchewan, the fastest-growing economies in Canada. But every Canadian province except Newfoundland and Labrador and Nunavut has at least doubled its number of “guest workers” over the years.

In an effort to modernize Canada's immigration process, the Harper government has
introduced several key proposals. The Agenda looks at what the proposals mean for
those coming to Canada. Click link to view "Realigning Canadian Immigration,"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrGfit4-z5g&feature=related

Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, has observed that this shift to temporary foreign workers or “guest workers” as others call them, is an indication of government’s off-loading of public policy to private sector interests. The public interest which is much broader than employers’ needs is increasingly being taken over by the private sector such as Canada Immigration’s plan to allow employers to define Canadian immigration policy.

 

While the involvement of employers can help reduce skill mismatches between local economic needs and immigration quotas set by Canada Immigration, there is a clear and present danger in allowing employers alone to determine the workers they are willing to admit because they are intuitively looking for average workers, not skilled labour. Employers are now taking advantage of the temporary work permit program to bring workers for hotels, fast food outlets, janitorial services and factories – typical Canadian jobs, albeit low-paying.

 

According to Naomi Alboim, Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University, “while the use of temporary foreign workers to address acute skill or labour shortages is justifiable, some employers are using them to fill ongoing vacancies without exploring more durable long-term solutions. This is an illustration of how federal policies which facilitate temporary entry to Canada sometimes have long-lasting detrimental effects.”

 

Temporary workers come to Canada practically as guests of the employer. Oftentimes, they have very few rights or which they are usually unaware. They have no access to services available to other immigrants, and rarely is there a path for them to permanent residency.

 

Yessy Byl, a lawyer who volunteers with the Edmonton Community Legal Centre describes the temporary foreign worker program as really about contracting out immigration. “In fact the government is setting the stage for a bizarre non-immigration program because those workers can’t immigrate,” Byl adds.

 

Now comes the Expression of Interest (EOI) program that Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenny proposes to install beginning January 2013. It’s a program borrowed from New Zealand and also adopted by Australia last July 2012, which builds a pool of skilled worker applicants that will allow employers to cherry-pick potential immigrants to fill regional labour shortages. By the end of 2014, Canada Immigration expects this pool of candidates to be made available to employers who can screen and choose the workers they would allow to immigrate.

 

Essentially, this amounts to privatizing immigration. Whether unintentional or not, the present Conservative government seems bent on passing to employers the responsibility for focusing the country’s immigration program towards meeting their labour market needs. To Minister Kenney, allowing employers to determine who they are willing to accept is needed to generate growth for the Canadian economy. In a statement issued last year, Mr. Kenney said “Employers are best positioned to decide who can best fill the open jobs rather than a passive and bureaucratic system.”

 

Based on the New Zealand experience, the Expression of Interest program is nothing but a paper review of an immigrant’s application, minus the required proof or documents needed to assess the application. An applicant can submit electronically or on paper an expression of interest to apply under the skilled migrant category. The questionnaire that accompanies the application is no different from the same standard questions an applicant needs to answer when applying for immigration. It’s still in a long format that asks for personal information, work experience, job qualifications and educational background. But the application appears to be biased in favour of those who have undergone post-secondary schooling or post-graduate studies in New Zealand, and those who have had work experience in New Zealand. If after a review the expression of interest is accepted, one must score at least 100 points to be included in the pool, then the applicant is required to submit all documentary proof of his or her answers to the questionnaire.

The pace and scope of change in Canada's immigration system in recent years leaves
one breathless. Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC_OHHc_ri0 to view
Prof. Naomi Alboim's "Shaping the Future: Canada's Rapidly Changing Immigration
 Policies."

How different is the Expression of Interest system from the current assessment of an application for any of the categories under Canada’s Immigration system? If New Zealand or Australia can accomplish its EOI assessment in 6 months or less, there is no excuse for Canada not to do the same. Except for one thing, there could be more Canadian applications than those submitted for New Zealand and Australia. But it’s not a good excuse if Canada Immigration is really sincere in its objective of reducing or eliminating the backlog of applications, which appears to be addressed by more efficient processing rather than by legislation or by a single ministerial decision.

 

Remember that all applications for immigration to Canada that were received prior to 2008 have all been wiped out from the backlog. More than 280,000 applications were affected, simply by a sweeping decision of an Immigration Minister, without comprehensive consultation, discussion and parliamentary debate. This also shows unpredictability in Canada’s immigration policy. The fact that changes in criteria can now be made unilaterally by a single minister and imposed retroactively indicates that the rules of the game are constantly changing.

 

Since the affected applicants had been waiting for seven years for their applications to be considered, they have refused to accept Minister Kenney’s decision to annul their applications. Lawyers for the applicants have asked the court for permission to bring a class action against the government. Lorne Waldman, a lawyer representing the applicants, has said that Mr Kenney's decision is unconstitutional and inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada’s Bill of Rights.

 

The Expression of Interest system that is being proposed by Canada Immigration will not fully solve the issue of qualification and employment, especially if the determination is going to be left primarily to employers. While it is the federal government that regulates immigration, provincial and professional bodies play key roles in facilitating the employment of immigrants once they have settled in the country. Today, there is less coordination between professional bodies and industry and the government. Attracting qualified new immigrants with promises of good jobs would be misleading them, more so if they find out that it’s the provincial and professional bodies that really control access to jobs. The sad consequence is that these immigrants become deprofessionalized and are forced to accept jobs in the labour market that either underemploy or deskill them.

 

More to the point, Canada Immigration is increasingly becoming a slave to the labour market. The reliance on temporary foreign workers who are selected by employers based on their own short-term interests is headed towards a very troubling path. It is a policy that augurs well for the normalization of migrant labour in Canada, but doesn’t bode well for diversity, appalling for the workplace, and could potentially turn immigration into a source of social tension.

 

Privatizing immigration adds to the growing list of public services that the present Conservative government insists are better delivered and more cost-effective if transferred to the hands of the private sector. Health care, education, social services, utilities, even the prison system, are just a few of those targeted for privatization. The overhaul of Canada’s Immigration system is a clear sign that employers and the labour market are being given the primary responsibility to determine public policy to the detriment of national interest.

 

Throughout its history, Canada has been a welcoming nation to immigrants, unifying their families and providing citizenship and accepting their full participation in Canadian society. Canada’s radical shift in immigration policy from one that is based on the huge potential of human capital is reversing this trend and pushing Canada downwards to a troubling new direction.

Canada’s dream daycare program

 

 

One of the recurring program changes that Canada Immigration considered between 2008 and July 1, 2012 was the proposal to impose a four-year limit on temporary foreign work in Canada and a four-year waiting period to return to Canada. This was supposed to include all temporary foreign workers, without exception.

 

On April 1, 2011, Canada Immigration implemented this program but Canada’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenney had a change of heart and exempted the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) from the four-year limit on temporary work visas, thus continuing the right of foreign domestic workers to apply for permanent residence after completing two-years of live-in service. Maybe the thousands of Filipino caregivers under the LCP have worked their magic charm on Mr. Kenney after they have hailed him as their hero and the “king of Canada’s multiculturalism.”

Filipino nanny takes care of employer's child. Photo courtesy of Kia, Marin & Liam.
Click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDsbr_X2uV8 to view  "Nanny Documentary 1."

But the exemption covers only those caregivers who have already completed their work contracts and have submitted their applications for permanent residence when the new rules took effect in 2011. We just have to wait and see if the final Rules and Regulations in January 2013 will still contain this important exemption for workers under the LCP.

 

There is reason to worry because this has been done before by the Canadian government. Before the Foreign Domestic Movement in 1981 and the LCP in 1992 were adopted, foreign domestic workers, particularly those from Europe and those of English ancestry, were given the right to enter and stay. Prior to the 1970s, domestics from Britain were granted permanent residence after providing live-in services for six months. These domestics were given this right with the eye toward their future roles as wives and mothers. But this right was not given to Caribbean women who were allowed to enter Canada under short-term work permits. 

The LCP and the previous Foreign Domestic Movement program were seen by Third World domestic workers as the necessary purgatory to obtain permanent residence. But this may change if the path to permanent residence will be removed from the program by Canada Immigration in 2013.

 

Right now, nanny placement agencies in Canada are looking for various alternatives in case the LCP becomes a four-year temporary contract without giving workers hired under the LCP to apply for permanent residence after two years. The only reason why the LCP has become so popular, especially among Filipino women, is because these workers look at their mandatory two-year live-in requirement as a transition to a better future. These workers are unlikely to complain no matter how exploitative their work and living situations are. Even if their work amounts to being underemployed and de-skilled, it is still better than remaining in the Philippines with no prospect of a better future. Judging from the success of their predecessors, they all know they can also do well in the open job market after becoming permanent residents.

 

An alternative being considered by nanny placement agencies is the hiring of au pairs from Europe for 12 months under the existing working holiday visas. These visas are faster to process and since holiday visa workers do not stay permanently after one year, this option for Canadian families is of low cost to the government.

 

Daycare has always been a critical problem for Canada’s young families, where many Canadian women are torn between the choice of keeping their professional careers and putting them on hold to look after their young children. The cost of daycare has also increased sharply in the last 20 years, driving spouses to consider alternative working hours so that one parent is left to provide care to the children while the other works. This is especially true for parents who prefer home-based child care rather than the child care centre. It is estimated that the national average for child care in Canada is more than $4,500 a year, and 7.8 percent of a family’s budget is directed to child care.

Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYtPycoW9ng to view "The
Canadian National Child Care Policy."

There has been a move toward regulated child care in all provinces, away from informal family arrangements. In Quebec, which subsidizes daycare heavily, 72 percent of children attend regulated centres. In the rest of Canada, the rate is 40 percent. It is also estimated that more than 165,000 regulated spots are needed to meet the demand for space.

 

In Quebec, its newly-elected premier Pauline Marois has promised low-cost day care for all families, a project which she launched 15 years ago when she was education minister in 1997. The heavily government subsidized $7-a-day daycare system has been plagued by a shortage of available spaces and many families have been on the waiting list for so long. Marois promises to create 28,000 new spaces, a project which will take four years and cost the province $261 million more per year. But this project, according to Marois, will eventually leave the province with a spot for every child.

 

A recent study showed that the Quebec daycare system works and it provides economic benefits to families and has helped single parents to enter the workforce. The study also concluded that the province’s daycare program added 1.7 per cent to Quebec’s GDP in 2008 and brought back $1.50 in tax revenue for the federal and provincial governments, combined, for every $1 spent by Quebec. In Ottawa, the last time the federal government toyed with the idea of creating a national daycare system based on the Quebec plan was during the Liberal government under Paul Martin.

 

At present, Canada provides cash transfers and tax exemptions for child care services that benefit disproportionately the wealthiest Canadians, but offer very little support to middle-class families. Outside Quebec, parents are paying between $1,000 to $2,000 a month for each child care space, an enormous fraction of a middle class family’s income.

 

The concept of a national childcare program has been proposed by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1970. Finding that reliable child care is fundamental to women’s equality in employment, the Commission recommended that “the federal government immediately take steps to enter into agreements with provinces leading to adoption of a national Daycare Act.” The Vanier Institute of the Family also noted that “most women and men expect to have jobs and careers. With the high cost of living, most families require two earners to achieve an average standard of living.”

 

Nothing has been accomplished at the federal level and the provinces—with the exception of Quebec—in successfully implementing an effective and low-cost daycare program.

By virtue of default by the federal and provincial levels of government, the Live-in Caregiver Program has become Canada’s substitute daycare program: home-based daycare plus the added benefit of a caregiver who looks after housekeeping, cooking and other menial chores that Canadian mothers would prefer not to do by themselves. It’s a dream daycare program: low-cost to the government, and an affordable and comfortable luxury to families who can afford to hire a live-in caregiver.

 

However, the mandatory live-in residence requirement for LCP workers undermines the LCP workers’ personal freedoms and increases their vulnerability to every form of abuse and exploitation. Domestic workers have to endure two years of indentured service just to have a shot at the prize of landed or permanent resident status.

 

Whether live-in caregivers keep their chances of gaining permanent residence after two years of work, the obvious winner in this type of arrangement is the Canadian government. Foreign domestic workers bear the heaviest of burden among all new immigrants—that of modern-day slavery only to get a crack at that much-vaunted Canadian life in the future, while others get instant landed status and the opportunity to pursue the careers they’ve prepared for.

Shutting the doors

Canada swears in about 160,000 new citizens every year and during the Canada Day celebrations on July 1st, a total of 1,500 people took their allegiance to their adopted country. This is the biggest day in terms of the number of individual ceremonies held across the country on a single day.

Canada Day, July 1st, is celebrated with fireworks at Ashbridges Bay in Toronto.
Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOm-15621bs&feature=related to
view, "Peter Russell - How to Become a Canadian."

But even as Canada offered its welcome mat to its new citizens on July 1st, the doors to aspiring new immigrants under the federal skilled worker and investor program have been slammed shut by Citizenship and Immigration Canada until July of next year. Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, in a speech before a C.D. Howe Immigration conference, announced it’s about time to put a moratorium on the country’s skilled labour program in order to “reset the button.” Kenney’s decision put the brakes on new applications under the two programs popular with skilled workers wanting to come to Canada from abroad, which he stressed is part of the government’s backlog elimination strategy.

Kenney said it will be just “a temporary pause on new applications for the federal skilled worker program,” to “ensure that improvements to the program have time to be put in place which will give new applicants the opportunity to be even more positioned to succeed in Canada.”

But he cautioned that the moratorium will not amount to a drop in immigration levels. According to Minister Kenney, the only way to make the system run faster is to get rid of the backlog in immigration applications and at the same time give the government the opportunity to revise the much-criticized selection criteria for accepting new immigrants.

Under this year’s budget, the Conservative government has already scrapped all applications prior to 2008 as a way of eliminating a backlog of 280,000 applications. Even after removing all those applications, there would still be plenty of others waiting, thus “there’s just no point in any longer stockpiling people in the back of the backlog,” Kenney added.

What additional changes Ottawa will make to the federal skilled worker program are not known, but Kenney said he’d like Canadian employers to have more say in selecting immigrants under a system where they can choose potential job candidates from a ready pool of pre-screened skilled immigrants.

Last year, Kenney capped the number of applications for the investor program to 700 spots and doubled the minimum investment requirements from $400,000 to $800,000. The quota was filled in 30 minutes. There are currently 25,000 investor applications representing 86,000 principals and dependents in the backlog.

Currently, the federal skilled worker program has an inventory of 463,214 people waiting for a decision. Ottawa is hoping the new law would enable Kenney to return and dispose the files of some 280,000 people submitted before Feb. 28, 2008. This has raised the ire of affected applicants who have filed a class action lawsuit against Ottawa, which has agreed not to destroy or return their applications within 90 days of the bill’s passage until the lawsuit is certified by the court. The court is yet to hear or set a hearing date in September.

Judging by his official pronouncements, Minister Kenney is apparently casting a huge precautionary tale.

First, in revising the rules for temporary foreign workers allowing them to enter and work in Canada for four years but leave thereafter, the government shows bias and preference to temporary status rather than giving them a chance to stay as permanent residents.

Second, in declaring a moratorium for sponsorship of parents and grandparents of already landed immigrants, Kenney has effectively set aside the objective of family reunification under the law.

Third, in eliminating all previous skilled worker applications prior to February 2008, Kenney has unfairly and unjustly shut closed the system to these people without the benefit of a review and assessment of their applications, which is probably a violation of their fundamental right to natural justice.

And now, with this recent suspension of all applications under the skilled worker and investor program, the government is further squeezing the door ever so tightly that those who wish to enter Canada are being excluded.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada Minister Jason Kenney. Photo by The  Canadian
Press/Adrian Wyld. Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQpkiKsNntI to
view "Jason Kenney announces canges to CDN Experience Class."

A recent poll conducted by Ipsos Reid for Postmedia News and Global TV in time for the celebration of Canada Day, shows that almost three-quarters of Canadians don’t want the federal government to increase the number of people the country allows to enter every year. However, four in 10 people feel those immigrants are having a positive effect on the country.

The message from the survey is clear: that while immigrants are being tolerated to enter Canada, there is a feeling among Canadians that there are an awful lot of them coming in right now.

Darrell Bricker, president of Ipsos Reid, said that Canadians don’t seem to realize the dramatic transition in the government’s immigration policy since the 1960s. He argued that fifty years ago, the government was trying to convince Canadians to welcome the “poor and huddled masses and refugees who made up most of the immigrant population at the time. Now, it’s about attracting people who are going to drive our economy.”

If the poll survey would be taken as a basis for government policy, then Canada should not let more immigrants come into the country as it currently allows. The survey shows that 72 per cent of the respondents said no to more immigration. This is in contrast to population projections based on the 2011 census that showed a rapid decrease in fertility rates in Canada, and if this trend continues, Canada’s population growth could be close to zero within the next 20 years. It behooves that without a sustained level of immigration, Canada’s zero population growth could become a reality.

The policy changes the Canadian government has adopted in the last few months appear to be short-sighted as they are merely aimed in attracting people who are immediately needed by industry or employers. These policies are based on the disposability of people, not on their potential contributions to the economy on the long haul. Thus, employers might be able to hire their workers needed for short-term periods and could be disposed of when they’re no longer necessary.

The treatment of immigrants that these policy changes by the Conservative government seem to augur is bereft of the respect for the fundamental humanity of temporary foreign workers. They harvest our fruits and vegetables, care for our children, clean our houses, perform the most backbreaking and perilous work in our oil and tar sands. They fill all the labour needs in jobs which are unappealing to Canadians or which Canadians refuse to take. They come to us, as the Swiss playwright Max Frisch wrote, “as menial labourers, and somewhere along the way we seem to have forgotten that they are also human beings.”

This way of treating immigrants is very un-Canadian like. It parallels the immigration system of our neighbour in the south where foreign workers are denigrated after they have been exploited of their usefulness to society, where they are stripped of their basic humanity, and branded as aliens who are deemed as “illegals.”

The decision by U.S President Barack Obama to stop deporting young illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children, despite its humanitarian element, has been criticized and lambasted by the Republican Party as pandering to the Hispanic vote. Arizona’s “Show your papers” in cracking down on undocumented immigrants has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court while part of the law was declared unconstitutional. What the U.S. Supreme Court decision and Obama’s stop-gap measure have achieved is merely to highlight the continuing inability of the United States to wrestle with its immigration mess. Former U.S. President George W. Bush tried immigration reform but was scuttled by his own party in Congress. President Obama has hardly begun to try his hand at immigration reform but already the Republican Party has spoiled his efforts.

Too much of the debate in the United States has been focused on the legality of immigration, deflecting the more fundamental issue of the positive effects of mass immigration on American society.

In both the United States and Canada, study after study has shown immigration has been beneficial to society in general. There is enough social evidence to debunk the notion that immigrants have worsened social ills, or that they have reshaped the social fabric in harmful ways.

Writing for the Harper’s Magazine in March 1871, Louis Bagger compared the Castle Garden on New York’s Battery, where ships from Europe deposited immigrants who flooded America after the Civil War, to an absolute immigration depot. Among those who came in 1869, according to Bagger, were 99,605 from Germany, 66,204 from Ireland, 41,090 from England, and more than 35,000 from the Scandinavian countries. Millions of people afterwards would immigrate to America, making it a nation of immigrants. The same can be said of Canada, especially after the 1960s.

Yet, both countries have become wary of immigrants today. Every time immigration comes to the top of the public agenda, a dark shadow prevails -- the dark shadow of racism. Racist demonization always begins the hysterical rhetoric, and it’s not a new phenomenon. The racism in this debate is more pronounced in the United States, with its epicentre in Arizona. Canada may not be too far behind if the ruling Conservative government is allowed to continue singlehandedly, without a robust public debate, with its sweeping policy changes under the pretext of eliminating the immigration backlog and reforming a broken system.

Canada’s sinister immigration backlog solution

With a clear majority in Parliament after leading two minority governments, nothing can now stop the ruling Conservative Party in having its way over the next four years. This is why Canada’s Minister for Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney appears to be in a hurry to overhaul the country’s immigration system every time he announces new policy changes.

Kenney is in fact dismantling Canada’s immigration system at will. Public consultations which he himself has initiated will never change his position. People are being encouraged to speak up but only for the sake of token participation. It’s only a matter of time before we witness a virtually new program for selecting immigrants in this country.

Canada's Minister for Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney. Photo courtesy
of mostlyconservative. Click to view "Jason Kenney: Bottom Line
Immigration," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVjnW6IsAAs

Under the pretext of eliminating the backlog in the main federal economic immigration program, Minister Kenney recently announced that he is cancelling all applications submitted prior to February 27, 2008, for which an immigration officer has not made a decision based on selection criteria by March 29, 2012. Close to 280,000 applicants will be affected by this decision.

“The Federal Skilled Worker Program backlog is a major roadblock to Canada’s ability to respond to rapidly changing labour market needs,” says Kenney. “Having to process applications that are as many as eight years out of date reduces our ability to focus on new applicants with skills and talents that our economy needs today.”

Before being elected as majority government, the Conservative Party had been singing a different tune over the last four years. They were the political party of immigrants, the Tories claimed. The Tories were praising immigrants for being essential to Canada’s prosperity. There was no mistake in Jason Kenney’s appeal to Canada’s newcomers when he portrayed himself as hero to new immigrants. That was before. Alas, the federal elections are over, and the Conservative Party has suddenly been afflicted with mega-amnesia.

For four years as a minority government, the Tories could not cut back the flow of immigration applicants to this country so they had to maintain or increase the projected number of immigrants to Canada every year. Canada’s minority population is getting larger due to immigrants from non-Western nations and all the political parties are after their support.

Well, things are different now. Canada’s immigration minister doesn’t have to worry about the minority population vote anymore. That’s why it is so easy for Jason Kenney to put the blame squarely on the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSW) as the main reason for the immigration backlog. As he is fond of saying, the backlog is simply a mathematical problem. “When total applications exceed total admissions, you get a backlog.”

Of course, the minister is right. But who made this happen in the first place? Wasn’t it Kenney himself who smugly boasted that the backlog issue reflects well on Canada—that it is the Number 1 choice destination of immigrants in the world? Because Canada, according to Kenney, is a land “of opportunity, prosperity and democracy.”

When you keep opening up the application process, it is only logical that you create a line-up. And when there are only a few applicants you can accept to come to Canada, then you create a backlog. If you keep doing this every year, the line-up grows longer and longer. In short, the backlog issue is never a function of the number of applications accepted or the government is willing to entertain, but the number of applications actually processed and approved.

So, is the culprit the FSW program or the federal government and its bureaucrats?

It is fairly reasonable to expect the federal government to close the door to new applications, but not to eliminate those applications made earlier. Because these early applicants will be reimbursed for their fees, the federal government deems this is fair treatment. It would never be fair. The Canadian government has dashed their hopes and dreams. They gave up other options, and for some, opportunities for personal advancement which are no longer available after waiting so long. Others have postponed marriage or raising their families, so how can you be fair to these people? Their applications were never refused but only languished in the backlog because of bureaucratic incompetence.

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), the basic law that governs the country’s immigration system, says that decisions made under this law should be consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including principles of equality and freedom from discrimination. Applicants directly affected by this draconian decision by Canada Immigration to shut the door to those who have applied prior to 2008 but have patiently followed the rules are mainly from China, India and the Philippines. These are applicants not necessarily the type of people from Western Europe that Canada prefers. Wouldn’t this be a clear act of discrimination against a specific race?

Right after the federal elections in 2011, Minister Kenney asked Canadians to help the government round up and deport suspected war criminals and illegal immigrants, ominously signalling the change from his previous pro-immigrant stance during the election campaign to that of an “Immigration Hunter” as the media had dubbed him.

On October 20, 2011, Jason Kenney rose before the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and announced that immigration applications need to be reduced to fix the current backlog. He didn’t say then that those who applied before 2008 and whose applications are decomposing in the backlog would be dropped. Kenney instead decided to cap the number of applications for family reunification, thus denied the hopes of many new immigrants to bring their families with them to Canada, a clear defiance of the IRPA objective to reunite families. To allay the fears of these immigrants that they would not be able to sponsor their families, Kenney sweetened the cap by allowing parents and grandparents to come to Canada as temporary visitors under an expedited application process—8 weeks versus 8 years if they apply for permanent residence.

The Minister of Immigration wants a just-in-time system that recruits people with the right skills to meet Canada’s labour market needs, expedites their immigration and gets them working in a period of months, not years. In other words, Kenney wants employers to have a greater say in selection of immigrants.

Jason Kenney confirmed this decision in a recent interview. “The reforms are not about completely handing over to employers the power of selection, but rather about increasing their role,” he told The Huffington Post Canada this week. “There will continue to be a certain criteria that people have to meet.”

Many have criticized Kenney’s decision to put employers in the driver’s seat of Canada’s immigration system. Peter Showler, former chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, said allowing businesses to pick and choose the country’s newcomers hands “significant control over the selection of ideal immigrants to employers, who are acting in their own self-interest, not in Canada’s interest.”

Giving employers more say in selecting immigrants will result in a narrower focus because they will simply choose those who can fill a particular job. Right now, there are more than 300,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada—people who have been hired by employers to fill in their labour shortage. Unlike immigrants, these temporary workers have no guarantee of staying in Canada after their papers expire. These are the types of workers preferred by most employers; these are workers who can be hired when needed and disposed of when their services are no longer necessary.

Lately, Canada’s Human Resources Minister Diane Finley has announced that the Conservative government would now be willing to let employers pay temporary foreign workers less than what Canadians are paid. Finley said that employers will now be allowed to pay such foreign workers 15 per cent less than the prevailing wage.

So, the hiring of temporary foreign workers which was begun as a stop-gap measure in 2000 looks like the policy of choice by the Conservative government. There will be more temporary foreign workers coming to Canada who are disposable after their contracts expire. No more backlogs, then. Exactly what the economy needs in order to prosper and for employers to make more profits: by lowering wages.

There is something more sinister in the government’s scheme to eliminate the backlog and reform what is now considered a dysfunctional immigration system. The reason is more economic than anything else: to drive down wages or else the government will take in more temporary foreign workers, trained and cheap labour from abroad.

The Conservative government wants to put a stop to Canadians whining about jobs going to immigrants and foreign workers. He is not mincing words: Canadian workers had better stop complaining and accept lower wages. Jason Kenney has already warned that unemployed workers who refuse to take low-wage jobs will have their employment insurance benefits cut off. If Canadians agree to work for less, says Kenney, Ottawa won’t have to bring in as many low-wage outsiders.

Super visa – not so super

 

The new super visa for parents and grandparents took effect last December 1.

Canada Immigration promises to issue these visas within eight weeks of application. So, instead of waiting for eight years to visit their child or grandchildren, parents or grandparents can now come to Canada within a matter of eight weeks.

Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announces the "super visa" program
 for parents and grandparents effective December 1st . Photo courtesy of  Adrian
Wyld/Canadian Press. Click link to view  "A Statement on the New Super Visa,"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgNJFG-MZX0

What a great relief! But wait, let’s see if this would really work.

Right now, there is a backlog of applications for sponsorship of parents and grandparents. Those waiting for approval for their visas will have to wait for eight years, possibly even ten years, if their applications were received in September 2007. In Manila, for instance, the Canadian Embassy will take 50 months or more than 4 years to assess the sponsors of these applications, and 36 more months or three years to assess the parents and grandparents being sponsored.

Why does it take so long to assess an application? How many eyes are looking at one application and how much paperwork is exchanged between Ottawa or Vegreville and the foreign office? This is where Canada Immigration should focus its efforts to reduce or eliminate the backlog.

There are about eight documents a sponsor fills out when applying to bring a parent or grandparents to Canada, which includes the checklist and the use of a representative form. This means that there are actually only six vital documents that must be reviewed by an Immigration Officer when the sponsorship application is received in Vegreville or in another immigration office inside Canada.

Assessment of an application entails examination of the applicant’s status in Canada, which is the starting point of any sponsorship application. Once status is determined, then a review of proofs of marriage, birth and other family information will follow. An evaluation of the applicant’s income will be made, and if the low income cut-off is satisfied, the application is approved in principle. This entire process does not require 50 months to complete, unless we count the number of times an Immigration Officer goes to the bathroom or breaks for coffee, lunch or a smoke of cigarette. Or factor the time spent in talking with other colleagues that may not be related to the assessment work being done.

Efficiency problem, not backlog

What this picture suggests is an efficiency problem, not a backlog.

Granting Canada Immigration could be short of manpower, still that doesn’t imply a problem of backlog. Besides, Canada Immigration measures backlog as a function of the total number of applications received each year, not as the number of applications actually processed in real time. You’ll always have a backlog problem if you simply look at the number of applications coming in, without effectively measuring efficiency. Therefore, Canada Immigration’s problem of backlog is illusory, if not totally misleading.

Just consider Canada Immigration’s claim, for example, that the new super visa application will take on average eight weeks to process. The same application forms will be filled out by the sponsors and their parents or grandparents, and similar proofs of identity, births, and other pertinent family data will be assessed. Yet, the super visa application will take only eight weeks to process, despite the additional requirements of buying Canadian medical insurance coverage and a medical examination.

The same requirements—8 weeks for a super visa to process and 8 years for sponsoring parents or grandparents.

This clearly indicates to us what the real purpose of the super visa application for parents and grandparents is. In effect, Canada Immigration is telling permanent residents and citizens that they don’t actually need to bring their loved ones in Canada to live with them. All they need is to visit, and they can stay for as long as two years, provided they have medical insurance and their sponsoring children have satisfied the low income cut-off. And they can always return again after leaving Canada because their visa will be valid for ten years. This moratorium is not a temporary pause, but a necessary conditioning of the minds of new Canadian permanent residents and citizens to accept the new order in Canada—the new policy on family reunification, which is exactly no reunification. The moratorium will surely be extended for another two or more years, especially if it works, and you have read it from this blog.

More roadblocks ahead

Intake of immigrants to Canada starting 2012 is already being significantly reduced. Whether these are foreign temporary workers, including live-in caregivers, and applicants for permanent residents.

Visas for foreign workers have already been relaxed by allowing temporary workers to stay for a maximum of four years, perhaps a concession to industry demand. The exodus of live-in caregivers has been slowed down by prolonging processing times for applications, both for first-time caregivers and caregivers applying for permanent resident status.

Most live-in caregivers waiting for the approval of their permanent resident status have already lapsed work permits and have been advised by Canada Immigration not to worry and that their work permits will be approved as soon as they are granted permanent status. Why would they still need open work permits when they are already permanent residents?

There is now a long delay in the processing of permanent resident applications by live-in caregivers, and it is unnecessarily tying them up indefinitely to their employers, even beyond their two-year work contract. This way, Canada Immigration is able to cut the supply of incoming caregivers by forcing those caregivers in the country and who are simply waiting for the approval of their permanent resident status to remain with their employers. This creates an illusion that the demand for caregivers by Canadian families is being met.

Closing the doors permanently to parents and grandparents is not possible under the current law without tinkering with the original make-up of Canadians to be allowed as permanent residents.

Will Canada, for example, disqualify applicants with older parents, such as those over 50 and above, or discriminate against married applicants with children and living grandchildren? To do this, the present law has to be amended to dispense with the objective of family reunification. A moratorium on parents and grandparents may appear reasonable and a super visa looks like a good thing in the interim.

Onerous obligations

But looking at the requirements that an applicant must meet in order to be eligible to apply for a super visa, there are at least three onerous obligations that need to be satisfied.

One, the sponsoring child or grandchild must provide a written commitment of financial support even though the low income cut-off is met. This is equivalent to a sponsorship undertaking or agreement when sponsoring a family member for permanent residence. This written commitment is unnecessary since the parent or grandparent will not be eligible for social assistance when they visit Canada.

Second, parents and grandparents must undergo medical examination, which is also a requirement under regular sponsorship. This process already takes a lot of time from the total of eight weeks allotted to complete the application.

And third, applicants or their sponsors must purchase comprehensive Canadian medical insurance, valid for at least one year. The medical insurance must provide a minimum of $100,000 in coverage and must cover the cost of the applicant’s health care, hospitalization and repatriation. The premium for this medical insurance will be a big burden for most parents and grandparents, or even to their sponsors.

Denial of right to sponsorship

Sponsorship of parents is critical to most new immigrants in this country, especially to those who have young children who can benefit from the care of their grandparents. These immigrants have contributed to the Canadian economy and many of them are on their track to citizenship; thus, they have earned the right to sponsor their parents. Yet, Canada Immigration is denying them this right and making it more difficult for parents to come here to reunite with their children and grandchildren on the pretext that they’re trying to fix the backlog problem.

We are living in critical times. The fragile world economy, the lingering eurozone crisis and the continuing joblessness in the United States, all help spur on immigration hysteria.

Advanced economies are closing their borders to the mass exodus of refugees from the Third World. Under the helm of the Conservative Party for the next four years, the Canadian government will stay on course with this trend of tightening its doors to prevent the influx of immigrants to this country.

Kenney’s immigration backlog solution

As early as this late July, disquiet has been looming over Canada Immigration’s plan to slam the door to immigrants planning to make Canada their new home. The federal government, capitalizing on its newly-earned majority in Parliament, had just published the names and mug shots of suspected war criminals living in Canada.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney appeared before a House of Commons
 committee on   Oct. 20, 2011 to discuss immigration backlogs. Photo courtesy
 of  Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press. Click image to view "Immigration Minister
Jason Kenney talks to stakeholders and the public about 2011 immigration
 policy," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKuRRYr88a4 

Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister for citizenship and immigration and popularly dubbed by the media as the “Immigration Hunter,” asked Canadians to help the government round up and deport suspected war criminals and illegal immigrants. Kenney also announced that the government would strip 1,800 people of their Canadian citizenship, which he said was obtained fraudulently.

On October 20, Jason Kenney rose before the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and delivered the ominous message that immigration applications need to be reduced in order to fix the current backlog.

After smugly boasting that the backlog issue reflects Canada being the number one choice destination of immigrants in the world—a land of opportunity, prosperity and democracy, Kenney then turns the problem of backlogs around as a simple mathematical problem. “When total applications exceed total admissions, you get a backlog,” he says.

To address the backlog problem, Kenney suggests that immigration levels be reduced. He stressed that annual applications must be cut down so that processing will not be slowed down as new applications are added to the pile of applications received in the previous years.

Kenney’s understanding of the immigration backlog problem appears irrational, if not fallacious. First, if Canada is indeed the number one choice for immigration in the world, then whatever number and mix Canada Immigration would establish every year—and no matter how high—would always fall short of the total population willing to come to Canada. Thus, there will always be a backlog. The backlog issue is never a function of the number of applications accepted or the government is willing to entertain, but the number of applications actually processed and approved.

Second, the best way to confront the backlog problem is to use a real timeline, which means starting from the time an actual application is accepted and processed in a visa office, which is a long way before an application can be successful. This means excluding whatever targets are established every year, because you cannot effectively measure operational efficiency against the whole population of would-be applicants, who on paper may all be accepted or denied.

So much time is spent from the day an application is actually received and reviewed. Information has to be verified and cross-referenced with Canadian labour requirements and needs or immigration policy targets and priorities before applicants appear for their personal interviews. One wonders why it takes so much time when we have at our disposal all the advances in technology and in medical and criminal surveillance.

And lastly, backlogs could be considered an inherent and perhaps, a necessary control valve to assure that we get the best we are looking for. People who apply to come to Canada as immigrants are its future citizens and Canada Immigration has the obligation to sort and screen from a mountain of applications only those who seem to be the best fit. In other words, backlogs are not bad per se.

Backlogs become a serious problem only when they involve applications which are supposed to be processed with haste and urgency due to shortage of skilled labour or when a matter of legal right has already been established. Much-needed temporary foreign workers and highly skilled immigrants fall under this category, and when their applications are bogged down in bureaucracy and red tape, backlogs become upsetting and distressful.

Sponsorship of family members such as spouses, children and parents is also a critical part of this category of immigrants. These are family members who have earned the right to come to Canada to live with their primary sponsors, especially those who have become citizens and contributed to the Canadian economy.

Minister Jason Kenney is proposing to cap the number of applications for family reunifications. Reducing the number of parents who could qualify under family reunification is impossible to accomplish without tinkering with the original make-up of Canadians to be allowed as permanent residents. Will Canada Immigration disqualify applicants with older parents, such those over 50 and above, or discriminate against married applicants with children and living grandparents? What happens now to the objective of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) to see to it that families are reunited in Canada?

There is already a low income cut-off requirement for sponsorship of family members, which is periodically reviewed and adjusted to economic reality. One cannot sponsor his or her family members if this income requirement is not met. In addition, sponsors are required to make an undertaking to provide financial support to their families, particularly parents, for a period of 10 years so they cannot opt to get social assistance during this period.

A proposal to give priority to families who can pay $75,000 up front for medicare expenses is both discriminatory and contrary to the objective of family reunification under the IRPA. And why would the problem of backlogs in processing be aligned with the economic ability of applicants to put money up front, when in fact it has nothing to do with the right to family reunification?

Refugees and those who are in need of protection routinely wait years for Canadian immigration officials to process their applications to Canada. The slow pace of having their applications processed adds to the refugees’ hardship and struggle to survive in desperate and dangerous situations, especially for those waiting to be reunited with their families trapped in refugee camps or countries beset with civil strife and wanton violation of human rights.

Will Jason Kenney throw them out of the plane too, as he is apt to describe Canada’s immigration system, and say to hell with Canada’s international obligations and commitment to refugees?

“Backlogs are not a function of a scarcity of operational resources,” according to Kenney. Despite Canada Immigration’s much-ballyhooed new worldwide electronic platform, the promise of modernization and efficiency of its Global Case Management System remains to be seen.

If there is a real and pressing backlog that needs to be addressed by Canada Immigration, it is in these categories of applicants—skilled workers, temporary or permanent, family members, and refugees—that the resources of government should be invested in. Not just in operational efficiency, but in clarity, consistency and fairness of government policy.

Contrary to the Conservative Party’s boast during the last federal election that they are the party for immigrants, they are nowhere near it as immigration levels in Canada continue to decline. There is clear evidence that the Conservative government is embarking on a hidden agenda to restrict the country’s immigration levels. The world’s economic downturn is being used as an easy and lame excuse, as governments in Europe, especially England, the United States and Australia are all focusing on reducing their intake of immigrants as part of their austerity agenda.

The extreme measures undertaken by the Conservative government are helping reduce the number of immigrants coming to Canada. Latest statistics from Canada Immigration show a decline across the board. Visas for skilled workers are down by 28 per cent, family-sponsored relatives are down by 14 per cent, and refugees, down by 25 per cent.

Myer Siemiatycki, professor of politics and public administration at Ryerson University, says the evidence is showing a very sharp decline. “Has the government decided on the outset that they want fewer admissions? Is the tap being closed tighter?” he asks.

Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has already admitted that he plans to cut family class immigrations. More draconian measures from the Conservative government can only be expected soon, and these would be devastating for immigrants.

Nannies’ new conundrum

They thought the program offers them a pathway to permanent residence after completing their work contract. But the new rules for temporary foreign workers which took effect last April 1, 2011 say otherwise. It’s not with certainty. The devil is in the details, as the idiom goes.

Effective April 1, Canada will now subject temporary foreign workers to a four-year cumulative duration limit. This means that temporary foreign workers in Canada, including live-in caregivers, may only work for a maximum of four years. After reaching this limit, temporary foreign workers must go back to their home countries, wait for another four years to lapse before re-entering Canada again as temporary workers.

Orwellian doublespeak

Canada's Minister for Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney.
Photo courtesy of dmix06.

This must be a big blow to Filipino live-in caregivers and their advocates who have embraced Canada’s Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney as their hero. Mr. Kenney, who has been riding high on his status as a folk hero to many Filipino women workers in Canada, is guilty of Orwellian doublespeak. He has promised before that nannies will not be covered by the new regulations, but the details clearly say that that would be subject to certain preconditions. Just like the time when Mr. Kenney said there would be no more need for caregivers to undergo a second medical examination when applying for permanent residence, yet the rules still state that medical officers overseas retain the right to examine for excessive demand. This includes, for example, those who may have illnesses or other inadmissibility issues which may impact on the ability of the government to provide health and social services.

Of course, there are exceptions to the new rules but not enough to guarantee that live-caregivers will not be subjected to the Conservative government’s policy of treating immigrants as mere economic units that they can dispose at will. This government seems bent on simply exploiting temporary foreign workers every four years based on supply and demand instead of opening up opportunities for skilled workers to migrate permanently to Canada which the country really needs to replenish its greying population.

Migrant workers in Picton, Ontario. Photo courtesy of mariza.gaspar.

In the words of Minister Kenney: “We saw a need for clear regulations to better protect workers from poor treatment and to ensure that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program continued to address short-term labour and skills shortages.”

Seasonal agricultural workers who come to Canada to work during harvest time are exempt from the four-year limit. Live-in caregivers who have applied for permanent residence after completing their contract are not covered by the rules if they have received an approval in principle letter. And so with other temporary foreign workers such as those in managerial or professional occupations, those employed under an international agreement, and those exempt from the Labour Market Opinion (LMO) process.

How will the new rules negatively affect Filipino caregivers in Canada?

Under the new rules, visa officers will issue initial work permits to live-in caregivers that will be valid for four years plus three months. A live-in caregiver must complete the employment requirement in her contract within four years in Canada, while the additional three months allow for a transition period to apply for permanent residence.

Most live-in caregivers can easily complete their contract of employment in less than three years, allowing them enough time to apply for permanent residence and continue working as caregivers while waiting for the approval of their applications for permanent residence (PR). But herein lies the problem: when is that approval-in- principle letter going to be in the mail?

No reprieve for varying situations

Not all caregivers are in similar situations and would expect smooth processing of their PR applications. Some would have problems with family members such as their spouses or children who are supposed to be examined before a live-in caregiver’s PR application is approved. A live-in caregiver’s spouse in the Philippines, for example, could be stubbornly uncooperative and would not bring him and the children to a medical examination. Or he would not simply fill out the required documentation. He would rather simply receive money remittances every end of the month from his wife who works like a slave in Canada to support the family. There are hundreds of husbands who prefer this type of arrangement so they could carry on with their new-found lifestyle of freedom and the luxury that Canadian dollars bring. An obstinate and uncooperative husband could delay the PR application process for an inordinate time, while the hapless nanny continues to wait for the approval in principle letter of her application.

Or, the marriage between the nanny and her husband has broken down due to the strains of a difficult and long separation or perhaps, either one of them is now in a relationship with another person. The wife then decides to apply for divorce which she needs to show to Canada Immigration as proof of the marriage breakdown. This again will delay the processing of the PR application. Let’s also mention that if there are minor children involved, the longer the process will take especially if the husband refuses to allow the children to travel to Canada in order to join their mother.

As in some cases, one of the children would have medical inadmissibility issues such as a child having Down syndrome or has a heart problem which the visa officer deems as imposing a heavy burden on Canada’s health and social services. So, the PR application will be denied. Under the rules, all family members of the live-in caregiver, whether accompanying the principal applicant or not, are required to be examined. Live-in caregivers cannot become permanent residents if any of their eligible family members are inadmissible.

I have encountered a number of cases where the PR applications of live-in caregivers have been unnecessarily delayed. Some of them have been here in Canada as temporary workers for over five years because their PR applications were either delayed due to bureaucratic red tape or disallowed because of medical inadmissibility issues. The new rules will not protect them as Mr. Kenney has promised. Many of these caregivers have already received removal orders.

It is not important for immigration officers to know whether live-in caregivers will seek permanent residence after completing their work contract. The question is whether an immigration officer is satisfied that the person would not stay in Canada illegally. This is what their Operations Manual directs them to find out. Advocates of Filipino caregivers in Canada should wake up and face this grim reality, and stop cuddling Mr. Kenney and the Conservative Party.

The present Conservative government under Stephen Harper has not done much for the benefit of immigrants. Mr. Harper tried to overhaul Canada’s system of accepting refugees and skilled workers. He cut the right of landing fee to half of the old fee of $975, and many ethnic minorities shifted their support to the Conservative Party. The Conservative government has imposed stricter conditions for refugees to enter Canada and cut funding for group sponsorships for refugees from countries ravaged by civil strife. Temporary foreign workers will now have a four-year limit on the length of time they may work in Canada.

What’s next?

Filipino caregivers hold rally in Toronto.

This year, there are over 150,000 people waiting for 11,200 visas. That would take about 14 years to process. Sponsorship of parents would be next if the Conservative Party wins a majority of Parliament’s seats this coming May 2nd federal election. They have already made known that they prefer to bring in younger family members who can work and therefore pay taxes, rather than older parents who would only sap the country’s pension or social assistance programs.

Canadians, especially the blocks of new Canadian voters who may likely make or break a government, need to hear solutions to our immigration dilemma. We’re tired of hearing the same pledges every time there is an election from both the Liberals and Conservatives. There are gaping holes in their credibility fences. We will need a giant grain of salt if we would only listen to their promises.